Momentum
by Tenuem
Summary: Phantom performs at Circus Gothica, he also steals for Circus Gothica. What his Master doesn’t account for though, is a certain team getting in the way of his plans. Now cross posted on wattpad,,, yeah. OCTOBER HIATUS! Ill be back!
1. The Boy In The Black

Im bad at actually continuing story's. I blame the DPJL discord channel by the way. Also I was binging the first season of YJ while writing this so the characters _might_ be a _little—lot—_ off from their regular personality. I'm super sorry. Two lines of two dots like below means scene change. And : one line with two dots means it's just a character POV switch. Sorry if that's confusing. I might just remove it all togeather.

 **HI SNAFFLE**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 1_

 **The Boy In The Black**

In which a ghost meets a bat, a bird,

and a sense of confusion 

-0-

He'd supposed, that in some strange way, with some far away, odd, logic that what he was doing, wasn't right; the way his head pounded, stomach churned, pins and needles danced along his legs numbed only slightly by the constant adrenaline rush he was drugged on at almost all times.

There were bags in his each of his hands. Two of them, he wasn't sure what was in them, it was much easier to hide in the back of his mind. Indulge in the sugary, sweet taste of the red mist. Ignore everything else around him. All he really knew was that whatever was in the bag, it was head and worth a lot of money—not that he really had the concept of money anyway.

There were down sides though. When he got hurt, it was harder to hide inside the redness, and not in the usually head pounding, stomach churning, pins and needles along his skin kind of way. When the police shot at him—even though he could go intangible—and hit him, he'd be violently ripped from the red fogs warm embrace, placed into some odd predicament he had no idea how he got in.

This was the type of deal, but there were no police when his eyes cleared from the red—so, so, so good. He never wanted to let go—only the dark sky and the night city lights below him. "What?" He could hear his own voice respond to something one of the other ghost—as he had been taught—said something.

"The Bat." The Ghost, a short, chubby thing, spoke. Finks, he had named the ghost.

Finks was one of his crew—he had been good, so, so, good, and he got rewarded. He was a _leader_ now—another was Big, who was super _big_ and strong, the last one Sheik, who had a cool robot eye thing. There was also Lydia, but he wasn't her boss. She was Masters _favourite_ , and she didn't have red eyes, which probably meant she was important. He wasn't exactly sure.

"Bat?" He mumbled mostly to himself, glancing around in confusion. He was only slightly mad that he couldn't return to the fog, when he was hit. Not by a hand or anything of the sorts, but by a blade. It was still lodged in his left calf. It's dark form sticking out awkwardly from the too big dark fabric he wore. He stared at the object in confusion before he realized. It was _bat_ shaped. "Kito!" _Faster_. He yelled at the others, they were being _followed_ and they had to get out _now_. Leaning back and twisting around he pulled the blade from his leg and shoving it into one of his many pockets.

Phantom sped up—he could go *so very fast*—the others following behind him shortly "Lopo es tu aler iika?" _Why are you so slow?_ He muttered annoyed glancing back at the ghost behind him. The damn _Bat. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Bat!_ Getting in his way. He wanted to be good. Needed to be good. He'd say it was his obsession, to be good, to be wanted. The ghost had talked about obsessions before. When they realized he really knew nothing about being a ghost. Finks main obsession was to be treated as equal, and at circus gothica everyone was strange. Big's was to be strong, and although he wasn't sure about Sheik—he hadn't talk to her much—he assumed it had to do with music. She had a guitar in her train cart.

Another _Bat-a-rang_ —or whatever the evil, little, things were called—flew past him, then spun around and zipped toward him. He dodged, watching as the batarang flew past him. Hearing the sound of Skeik let out a hiss let him know she had been hit. _Stupid_ he thought, she should've turned intangible, then again, he hadn't even seen it coming. He had been hit.

Arriving back at the train cart, blanketed by invisibility, they entered. Dropping the bags in the _looting cart_ as Master called it before returning to the Masters cart. "Minions!" He called in a strange joy, standing up with his beautiful, red, red, red, staff. Masters gaze switched to him. " _Phantom_ ," he spoke, his grin only stretching. "Come here pet." Phantom—he—did, moving toward the man with glassy, red, eyes. "Sit pet" _sit, sit, sit_. He did. Master grinned again, reaching down—phantom suppressed a flinch—and petting the ghost. Phantom only leaned into the touch, his core making a soft _purring_ sound at the rare sign of affection.

Across the room, Lydia frowned, shaking her head she signed to Freakshow, _you're going to break that boy._

Freakshow only let out a loud laugh. Hand tightening, fisting the boy below hims hair in anger making Phantom twitch and whimper. "He is _fine_." Freakshow finally spoke after a minute, letting his hand relax and go back to petting the ghost boy. "He is a ghost."

 _He's also a human. A child at that_. Was the only reply.

"Barely a human. He will be fine. Now _silence_ " Lydia did not speak, nore did any of the other ghost in the cart, they did not bicker or joke quietly. They did not speak. "Now. I think it would be about time we slept." No one mentioned how ghost really didn't need to sleep at all. Freakshow stood up, lifting his hand from Phantoms hair as he moved to bed area.

Phantom only _stared_.

-0-

"You look stressed" commented Dick from his spot on his couch, Bruce only hummed in acknowledgement. "No seriously Bruce," he frowned. "What's up."

There was a moment of hesitation, which Dick used to flip over the couch. "There was," another pause "a new villain."

Dick only raised an eyebrow. Sitting on top of the back of the couch he gestured to move on and explain more. Much to his disappointment Bruce only shook his head _no_. He frowned, jumping fully off the couch and moving toward his adoptive father. "It was a boy." Bruce finally spoke, seeing Dick about to comment he moved his hand to quiet him. "Your age." And with Dick was fully silenced.

Bruce turned and walked towards the cave entrance.

-0-

When Dick had gone out for a quick walk he hadn't expected anything to happen. So when he noticed a black haired boy stumbling down the street his hero instincts took over. "Ah, hey!" He yelled over to the boy, watching in mild fascination as the boy walked towards him. "Hey!" He tried again. "Kid?"

The boys head finally rose, revealing dark, red eyes barely covered by the thick, mop of black hair on the kids head. "Hey are you okay?" Dick asked, frowning as he noticed the limp in the boys step and the glazed look in his eyes.

Some clarity returned to his eyes as the boy looked at Dick, finally focusing. "Huh?" He mumbled confused, turning his head as if he wasn't sure where he was. "Who're—who're you." The boy finally slurred after a moment.

Dick blinked. Was the guy—drunk? He looked to be Dicks age, so that was impossible, unless he had stolen it or had abusive parents, Dick shivered at the thought. "Are you okay?" Dick repeated his question again.

"I need, food." The boy said after another moment of hesitation, and Dick frowned. Even from the distance he was at—and with the boys baggy, black clothing—he could tell that the kid was thin. Almost concerningly so. Dick assumed he was poor.

"Alright, alright okay." He raked his mind for what to do. "Do you have money?" The boy only tilted his head slightly, before shaking it _no_. "Here." Dick had reached into pocket and grabbed a twenty. Walking forward and closing the remaining five feet between them. He reached out, worry only increasing as he noticed the boy slightly flinch when Dicks hand got near, tossing the money he smiled sympathetically. The boys eyes went glassy, once more as he turned to move to the nearest store.

Dick frowned. " _Weird_ " he mumbled.


	2. With A False Heart

I'd just like to thank you all so much for reviewing and commenting! It means so much to me! If you got an update notice for this chapter, the update is coming soon! I just noticed the lack of -0- at the end of the description and it really bugged me. I've got an acting thing all this week so I might not be able to update every single day which I'm super sorry about. If you just started reading and don't understand or care, enjoy! Reviews make me happy!

Davidscrazy234 says; okay so basically this is big AU Dani doesn't exist and isn't planned to exist so I can't really have that happen. I do have plans for Conner and Danny though, I plan to place them on friendlier terms than what you suggested. The AU will be explored more later on in the chapters.

Pandemi and Glaciaj Flamoj; I'm super glad your enjoying it!

Please let me know what you think about the pacing and if you hate any of my headcanons or AU stuff thanks a lot

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 2_

 **With A False Heart**

In which he, for once is not

the one doing the robbing. 

-0-

Walking through the streets while it was nearing dark was not one of his smartest ideas but, he was tired, and when he was tired, he usually made bad decisions. Phantom simply opted to letting the red haze take him as he wandered the dark city streets. He was hungry. As soon as he had realized this, Phantom had unsurely moved toward his Master's cart and asked if he could go out to get something to eat. In his opinion the beat down he got for speaking was not worth the food he was going to have to borrow for forever.

Stumbling down the street he let himself be immersed by the red mist. It tickled his soul and ran flashes of pleasure down his spine. The red fog was nice, he liked it, and it liked him. Phantom let himself be lost. Stumbling down the sidewalk he was only barely aware of the sound of someone talking to him. The boy was weird, black hair—just like his—and olive skin—unlike his—he looked rich—the clothes, the hair—but then again Phantoms idea of rich was anyone with a little money to spare, the thing that was interesting about the kid though, was that he didn't have that _look at me I'm so rich_ air around him. In fact he looked almost kind.

Phantom could see people's auras, like a ghosts white one, people did have them too. They were colourful, greens and blues and purples. Not just white and the occasional black—the black ones on humans made him uncomfortable, they seemed to cling to the human more than flow out from them. Like some sort of virus. Shadow clingers, he liked to call the dark auraed people. The boy across from him had a golden aura, like the hero's he had seen over his years. They told stories of kind deeds and honesty.

Phantom had mixed feelings about the hero's, sometimes they were annoying and got in his way, other times they were pretty good and he admired them—very briefly and in secret—Master would kill him twice-over if he ever found out. He wondered what the boy had done to get a gold aura.

He kept on spacing out, returning to the red, and suddenly the boy was in front of him. A couple feet away. Slowly the boy moved toward Phantom, in his hand; a twenty dollar bill. _Yeah_ the guy really _was_ rich. He didn't bother to try to suppress the flinch he gave when the boys hand went near him, already to busy getting lost in the seas of red.

 _Go get something to eat_ the order rang in his ears, and glassy eyed, Phantom turned to fulfil it.

The store was large, and quiet. Rows and rows of shelves covered the ground. There were bags of chips, drinks, heat-ups, and things of the sorts on the shelves. All in all it was a pretty convenient store. He quickly and quietly bought some kind of small chip bag, the healthy things—whatever they were—that he had seen on advertising boards in other stores didn't seem to ever taste as good, plus they costed way more money, money he didn't have.

Phantom ignored the look the cashier gave him when he handed over the twenty and the chip bag. "So," the man across the counter started, "what's a kid like you doing out so late?" A glance to his name tag revealed his name was Christian. There was a certain glint to his eyes, like he was actually worried about the wellbeing of the kid in front of him and not just making awkward small talk. Phantom paid the glint of worry no mind.

"Just," Phantom stumbled over the words. "Trying to get some food." He said finally.

"Alright man," Christian replied after a moment, concern written on his face. He slowly moved handed the change over the counter. Not noticing the way the boys head cocked to the side in slight confusion before taking the money, and then the chips.

Phantom turned to leave the store. _As soon as you get your food, return back immediately_. The words of his masters orders echoed briefly in his mind as he found himself once more falling into the red sea of fog. Turning to head to the door he froze. There was another person there.

" _Freeze_! Put your hands where I can see them." A teenage boy stood in the door entrance, a small pistol like gun in his shaking hands. He seemed almost nervous, like he was _afraid,_ and not the one holding the _gun._

Christian behind him, moved to put his hands into the air, not before shifting slightly to hit a silent alarm. "Okay sir. Please calm down." Christians shoulders were tense, eyeing the other kid—Phantom—across the room, he was just staring at the teens gun with his freaky red eyes.

"Put—put the the money in the bag" the teen yelled, waving around a bag in one of his hands. Phantom frowned. His way of stealing— _borrowing_ —was much more effective.

"Sir the police are on the way" Phantom could feel the cashiers _nervousness_ from where he was standing. He could also feel the robbers _nervousness_ spike at the mention of police, and since Phantom fed off emotion mostly and usually felt a bit of each emotion he had taken, he was also _nervous_.

"M—money!" The robber moved forward on shaking legs. "Bag! Don't—don't make me shoot you!" The cashier took equally big steps away from the boy with the gun. Phantom stayed glued to the spot, frozen in fear. _He was going to be in so much trouble and Master would beat him until he could barely move and then send him out and he'd never be able to be good this stupid robber was going to get him hurt and he was so afraid._

The sound of _laughter_ echoed throughout the building, causing the robber to look up in alarm. "H—hey! Who's there? Sh—show yourself!" There was the quiet sound of _rustling_ before a black shape fell from the ceiling and knocked the teen to the ground.

Phantom flinched back at the sudden appearance. Robin of _Gotham_ was just standing there. The robber grunted. "Aren't you supposed to be in _Gotham_?" and Phantom raised his eyebrows. He would've said that.

Robin only shrugged. "Eh, felt like _dropping_ by y'know the usual." He then turned to look around the store. First at Christian then at Phantom. "You both okay?" At the small nods he was given he grinned, giving a mini salute before moving to jump away.

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

Christian glanced around. The boy with the chip bag—Phantom—was nowhere to be seen.


	3. Red Eyes, Foreign Start

I just wanted to check in and make sure you guys liked everything! Is the little beginning bit with the chapter title and description good? Or do you want more? Less? Don't be afraid to send me a message or a review. This chapter is a lot shorter than I would've liked but I'm on a rather tight schedule, so I'm super sorry! If you want to know more about that check the _updated_ chapter 2 authors note.

zecnasylynch: _cough cough._ I hope this was soon enough for you.

Bananarock509: _cough cough cough._ Here's another chapter??

Davidscrazy234: hello again, and lemme just say. You'll see. All in good time. /end me/

Bellmitch Kritznovah: Danny was never the best liar, that is all I will say.

Thanks to all four of you for the reviews! I love reading them and they make my day.

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 3_

 **Red Eyes, Foreign Start**

In which the circus acts

are not what they seem.

-0-

Two Days Later

Dick was still thinking about the boy from the store, it was rather impressive. When the police had come to gather information and get a witnesses report, from what he had heard—since he didn't exactly leave, not wanting the teen robber to escape, not that it would've really mattered—he had heard the cops talking to the cashier, but not the boy. When he had peaked through one of the windows of the store he realized the boy was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared—like a _ghost_.

They had been called in for a new mission, and Dick had nearly forgotten about the confusing disappearance of the boy from the store—who he was just going to call The Ghost Boy, or something like that since it was easier—and Robin couldn't help but think that it may of had to do with the strange boy that Batman had been chasing. After all, he was never one to give up easily. Robin almost found it kind of funny, he and Bruce had both met boys around his age that acted weird. How _odd_.

" _This_ " spoke the voice of Batman "is Circus Gothica."

"Creepy," Wally commented from his spot beside Robin, who only elbowed him with a smirk.

"I have reason to believe that they might be behind the many _mystery_ crimes that have been happening over the past few months. You are to go to the Circus, in disguise to investigate. _Covertly_." And with that he turned, and walked away, the image of a pale boy with red eyes and white hair left on the screen.

 _"So,"_ Robin said after a moment of silence "we're going to go play dress-up goth for a mission?"

"At least we're not _in_ the circus" Conner said as he moved to get ready.

"Whatever you say _Daring Dangers_ " Wally joked "at least I can actually _come_ on this one." And with that they all headed to get ready.

-0-

Tonight was one of _those_ nights. A show night to be exact. One where everyone was needed, Big was out setting up supplies, and moving boxes. Finks was moving around the _live_ animals, Sheik was off somewhere else and he—Phantom—was practicing. Across from him was Lydia who was supervising.

Glancing up at her floating from she waved, and Phantom smiled slightly. Lydia was nicer than Master. _How many more shows are we doing?_ Phantom signed to the ghost above him, doing a flip over a bar absentmindedly as he waited for an answer.

 _Four I think, two tonight and two tomorrow._ She replied after a moment. Phantom only nodded before continuing to perform flips and tricks on his bar.

"And then of to _Happy Harbor_ , that will end _perfectly_ " Phantom mumbled to himself, thinking of the hero riddled city.

"Places places" shrieked the voice of Master, Phantom straightened, standing up and ending his practicing. "We've got very busy night for you all! Tonight you all will be giving Mr. Wayne a _little visit"_ he cackled, before making a kissing noise, like something someone would do to call a cat. "Now come along. The show is about to begin."

-0-

Robin couldn't help but laugh at what they were wearing. The whole team was in civis, but not just regular civis. _Goth, civis_. Dark cloths and tight jeans. It was rather funny to look at them all. "Okay ready?" He asked briefly looking over them again. Artemis, Megan, and Zatanna were putting on heavy back eyeliner.

"How do I look?" Megan smiled at Conner, who only paused slightly before answering a simple _Gothic_.

The circus was in walking distance, for a bunch of super powered teenagers, so they _walked_. Jumping through the skies at high speeds, they eventually came to the opening tent. There was a boy with blank hair and way-to-pale skin standing at some sort of ticket booth. _That's the boy from before_. Robin realized with a quiet _gasp_.

 ** _What is it?_** He heard Megan's voice ring through

 ** _That kid._** Robin nodded his head towards the black haired boy. **_I've seen him before. Couple nights ago I ran into him. Thought he was homeless or drunk or something 'cause he was acting really weird. Then I saw him again at a store that was being robbed._**

 ** _Freaky red eyes_** Artemis commented noticing the boys very much _red_ eyes

 ** _I think he's the ticket dude. Come on_**. And with that Robin took his ticket from his pocket—one of many—and moved towards the boy. "Hi are you the ticket guy?"

The boy stared at them, eyes flicking from each member of the team before he slowly moved his eyes to Robins, his eyes widened slightly, he _knew_ that boy. That was the rich boy with the _golden aura_. In fact, now that he really paid attention they _all_ had those golden _hero_ auras. _Who are they?_ Phantom wondered to himself. It was then that he realized he was being talked to. "Uh, yeah—yeah I am" he spoke shakily "Do you have your uhm, your tickets?"

The team all shared a look glancing at each other through the corners of their eyes. The kid was spacey, as in his eyes would randomly gloss over, and he'd lightly sway from side to side. His voice was shaken and he seemed almost nervous to speak. Like he wasn't used to being allowed to talk to other people.

 _ **Poor kid.**_ Megan spoke suddenly. When the others raised their eyebrows for her to continue she sighed. _ **I tried to read his mind, because—well because he was kind of acting a little weird.**_ Artemis snorted. _**But all I could feel was a great sense of pain. His mind also felt almost—**_ she struggled for a word. Trying to think of what to say. _**Blocked I guess.**_ Conner frowned before focusing on the boy.

They each handed over their tickets—which were then hole-punched and given back to them—before heading into the tent. It was packed full of goths and creeps and creatures—figuratively of course—there _were_ a lot of people in cosplay though, devil horn headbands and freaky makeup.

Danny frowned lazily. Red swam behind his eyes. It almost hurt. There were only a few more people left until the show officially started. Then he'd have to go backstage and do his thing in his other form. The white haired, green eyed, cold bodied other self. _Phantom_. He wasn't quite sure what his human—black haired, blue eyed, warm bodied—self was called, but he had heard mensions of something starting with a _D_. It wasn't much, but it was at least a start, and that made him feel rather pleased.

Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed.

Loved it? Hated it? Don't really care? Leave a review to let me know what you want me to do! Ha that rhymed. Am I cool yet?


	4. Blinking Away

Musiclover435: thank you! I'll try my best.

Bellmitch Kritznovah: i hope you enjoy the show!

Davidscrazy234, jezzie24, PhantomGoat13: thank you all.

Reader238: all in good time.

Buterflypuss: i thought you were calling me a good chap and was kind of confused like?? Thanks? I'm glad I'm a good person? Did you click the button to early? Before I realized what you were talking about.

Pandemi: I feel so cool. 8D

Guest o3o: I know you deleted your comment or something but honestly that startled me so much. Like bloody hell dang. This seems like something my girlfriend would do xD

Bananarock509: would you?? _Shhhhh your ruining my plans_ lemme just say you and I, we think very, very, alike.

Glacio Koro: okay funfact time! I'm also a sucker for these stories. I love the creepiness of a mind controlling circus. Like? Heck yeah, the original inspiration for this fame from the DPJL discord chat—which you should totally join and say hi to me @Call me Dee because everyone over there is pretty chill—and **@Pandemi** , ironically enough. _If they can finish a story then goddamn I will too._ I don't know. I was kinda worried about it but yo. Thanks Pami for unknowningly inspiring me.

Also I may or may not of just taken Freakshows speach directly from the script because I didn't know what to write,

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 4_

 **Blinking Away**

In which the seeds

of doubt are planted. 

-0-

The tent was dark, fog covered the ground in a spooky just walked into a haunted cemetery kind of way. It was loud, the thunderous noises of millions of people echoed and bounced off the walls. There was a food stand of sorts right before the pathways to the seats. A muscled man covered in green body paint was handing out bags of popcorn and things of the sorts to the people who paid. Wally bought for bags of popcorn, the rest of the team bough none.

Noticing their looks he shrugged. "I'm hungry." He said slightly defensively as they moved to find somewhere to sit.

What lights there were began to dim, leaving nothing but the center ring dullily illuminated. A pale, albino man stepped out, red eyes shining fabulously in the darkness. He laughed crazed before beginning his speech. "Greetings, fellow outcasts. I am Freakshow, your master of ceremonies. Are you ready to smile, relax, and forget all your troubles amid the pleasant diversions of the circus?" Through the darkness Zatanna raised an eyebrow. Millions of shouts of no and never broke out in the crowd. The team glanced at each other before joining in on the yelling. Might as well fit in.

The circus master, Freakshow laughed once more. "Then you've come to the right place! Prepare to be disturbed and appalled by the bizarre and abnormal world of Circus Gothica." As his speech finished the sounds of a haunting circus tune played throughout the tent.

A roar played out through the grounds as a tall women with an robotic looking eyepatch of sorts came from the shadows. She stood proudly on a lion, grinning almost milisiously, her red eyes glinted in the darkness. The lion moved towards the center of the arena. From the ceiling suddenly a boy came falling down, a bungee cord attached to his feet, gasps left the crowd as he grabbed the eye patched woman and lifted her into the air, narrowly escaping the agitated lions teeth.

Robin narrowed his eyes. _Something_ wasn't right here. The boy that hand bungee corded down to the girl, had his body completely obscured. He wore a long dark cloak, akin to one a stereotypical _grim reaper_ might wear, he had baggy blank pants and fingerless mountain climbing gloves. On his face was an abstract wooden mask, with a far to wide grin carved into it. Dark eyeholes with skeletal designs were the only real way you could see skin. Glittering _red_ eyes stared out. The masked boy twisted, sending the girl in his arms flying off into the air. She _flew_ through the air for a moment, doing intretic flips and stunts.

As the lady neared the ground she's suddenly grabbed a hold of a rope that had dropped down from the ceiling. The masked boy and the lady slowly slid down from their spots until they hit the ground. Freakshow grinned, raising his bright _red_ staff. "The Terrible Twins everyone" he let out a haunting laugh. Cheers broke out though the crowd.

"How did they do that?" Megan gasped, amazed. Robins frown only deepened. Something about this _didn't_ make sense.

Phantom panted behind his mask. Even though ghost didn't seem to need to breathe, he did. He knew this only because one time, he had almost been caught while borrowing some money. Master had screamed something at him before grabbing and lifting him by his neck. Phantom had choked and cried out and tried to pull away his master's hands, eventually darkness danced in his vision and he knew no more. The mask was hard to breath in. There was no mouth hole. Only a deeply cut smile, that never pierced through the wood. Phantom really only wanted to take it off and finally breathe properly, but he was in front of the crowd, and since the Bat has seen him he was forced to wear the mask until they got out of there.

"Are you okay?" Sheik murmured to Phantom, his advanced hearing only just picking up the words of the elder ghost. He nodded not wanting to worry her. In reality he felt awful. "No you're not." She reprimanded quietly.

Phantom sighed, a tired smile on his face, even though she couldn't see it. "Feel like I'm 'bout to pass out." He mumbled lazily after a moment. Dots of black danced in his vision as he swayed. Phantom let himself be taken by the red so he wouldn't pass out on stage. Beside him Sheik sighed, noticing the faraway look in the young ghost eyes.

Conner frowned at the sound of voices. He could just barely hear them over the roaring sound of cheers.

"...you…kay?"

"No…you…ot…"

"Feel like…to pass ou…"

He scowled slightly. Could the boy in the mask not breathe or something? Then again, now that he looked at the mask more closely. The mouth carving didn't seem to actually pierce through the wood. Strange. The ringmaster grinned once again. Raising the strange staff of his he announced the next performances. The masked boy and the lady both moved off. Conner scowled, standing up he moved to leave.

Where're you going? Megan's voice rang out in his head.

I just want to check something. He answered.

I'll join you, just in case. Megan answered, Conner paused for a moment before nodding. Conner wants to go check something out Alright? She informed the rest of the team as she stood up to leave with Conner. "So" Megan turned to him as they moved down the rows of seats. "What did you see?"

Conner grunted, "heard something weird." Megan Blinked before nodding. She trusted Conners judgement.

Phantom took a deep breath of fresh air once he made it backstage, the mask hanging limp around his neck, the string on the back being the only thing keeping it up. It was unbearably hard to breath in that thing. Not that his master cared, not that he'd even dare to complain.

Sheik took a swig of some strange green liquid. Ectoplasm most likely, before moving over to Phantom with another bottle. "Here," she offered. Still nursing off her bottle. Phantom raised an eyebrow before taking it. He was pretty tired. Normally Phantom wasn't one to drink these type of things. They gave him a boost for a few hours. Sometimes a day if he was lucky, before it would all come crashing down, he'd become pale and tired. Ectoplasm attacking his other form, or at least that's what he assumed was happening.

Brushing a hand through his silvery hair he slowly brought the drink up to his lips. He knew he was going to regret this later on, but now was now, and he was _exhausted_. "Thanks" Phantom mumbled tiredly nursing the bottle.

Through the tend, the echoes of the audience cheered on, booming noises sending ripples of emotion to the two ghost in the carts, not that the people sending out the ripples knew. After all, Circus Gothica's advertisements about their _ghostly_ performers, were a lot more true than people cared to realized.

Sorry for the short chapter again, reviews give me wings~


	5. Iced Tears And Iced Minds

Technically a double post! But I mean. Yo that was at midnight. I might miss Friday, or Saturday because I've got a doctors appointment and then my show I mentioned briefly earlier is happening. Sorry.

Pandemi: Thank you so much! I don't really wanna spoil anything, but I'll say, things are usually easier said than done.

buterflypuss: this made my laughed more than it should've. Good chap.

SonicMax: did Tucker and Sam find out what? The ghost caring for him? Or him being in circus gothica, if that's the case I'll say that the answer you seek rest in a comment reply.

BrownHair2918: here you go!

Bellmitch Kritznova: yeah, I think they're called trapeze circuses, I'm not 100% on that though. I think I saw one when I was really young and that's sort of where the idea came from.

GranGlasses: all in good time, or bad time depends on how well I can keep up my schedule.

Bananarock509: I'm pretty sure at this point you could guess the ending of this. Thanks for keeping up with the story.

SIDE NOTE, sorry for this being so long. I wanted to get your opinion on the ghost, I know a lot of people don't like OCs in the story and even though they aren't technically mine, I basically took a blank character and gave them a personality. Also I wanted to add some background ghost characters, from other acts and such so if you have a ghost oc or an idea, don't be afraid to comment. Just make sure they actually have a ghost name, not something like _Bethany,_ and a brief appearance and personality description. An obsession would also be nice but not nessisary. Thank thank!

 **Guess who is lattteee, me. The answer is me. I'm super sorry for not posting guys, life happened.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 5_

 **Iced Tears and Iced Minds**

In which memories are made 

and memories are forgotten. 

-0-

 _Backstage_ , they were backstage. Boxes lined most of the walls along with cages—for animals they hoped—and the occasional prop. Conner could still hear the roaring sounds of the audiences cheers and shouts from the main show tent. It was rather dark in the room. The only light being from candles and from the sun that filtered through the ceiling and bathed the room in a warm red colour, like the tent.

Megan crept, feeling odd and uncomfortable in the dark backstage tent peeking around the cages she noticed something odd about one of them. It almost appeared to be _glowing_. There were rough carvings scraped into the metallic floor of the glowing cage. _Anz'Satune_ was written, next to it was a Roman numeral five, _V._ As the writing continued Megan soon realized it wasn't at all in English, or anything that really looked English in the first place. The letters were squishy and had odd placements, they curved and waved never staying on one still line.

Come look at this. She motioned to the cage. **_Something intelligent was probably kept in here or something_**. She spoke with wide eyes. Conner growled, frowning at the thought.

 ** _Doesn't that seem like a stretch though?_** Megan tried reason. **_It could just be people messing around. Or_** **_schedules?_** Conner sighed, hoping it wasn't what he thought it was.

"—antom was just? Moving around? Like in the middle of the night. Had to eat or something. He's weird like that" voices approached causing both Megan and Conner to give pause, they froze wide eyed before slipping behind some boxes to hide

"Did you hear that?" A new voice suddenly asked, Megan and Conner both held their breaths praying to whatever higher being that they wouldn't be caught. The sound of rustling like one would when shrugging and a "Naw, never mind. It was nothing." Caused them to calm down.

Conner peaked around the boxes he was hiding behind to glance at the two speakers. They were both covered in _green body paint_ —all the workers except for Freakshow were, it was odd, giving the whole tent a _magical_ _not quite from this world_ type of vibe—and the bright, ruby, red eye contacts definitely helped with the aesthetic. The two circus workers switched over to some strange language that neither Conner nore Megan had ever heard before, they laughed at some _unworldly_ joke, before turning and walking back into the main tent. Conner and Megan were left alone once again.

Creeping through out the area once more they came to another room. It was a train cart actually, and once they checked down the rail they realized it was an actually full on train. Megan had seen it in the commercials, and from what she understood only in the bigger towns did the big, grand tent come out. In smaller towns it was the train, and the smaller tents. There was a boy in the cart with the woman who was performing. Their backs were facing towards Megan and Conner, so they had no idea they weren't alone. Hanging from the boys hand was a mask, and the two team members realized these were the first acts resting backstage.

The sound of thunderous cheers broke out once more, and suddenly the _click click clicking_ of heels made itself known. The ringmaster, was back.

-0-

Freakshow grinned from his spot. There had been two more performances since the beginning one with Phantom and _Sheik_ , or whatever her name _was_ , and now, intermission. The echoing sound of cheers and shouts continued, sending off sounds like explosions through the tent. Freakshow gazed along the rows of audiences as he moved to leave.

His heeled left a dull, _click click click_ in his wake as he moved towards the train carts. Walking in he glanced around the rather dark area. His red, red eyes scanning the room. Despite the dim lighting, he could still see the dim glow of Phantom and Sheik. "Phantom," he greeted, and the boy flinched. _Good_. Freakshow watched as the boys head slowly turned towards him, swiveling almost unnaturally on his neck, he, for a minute was reminded of those horror movies where the girls head would spin around, before shaking the comparison off. Monsters like those were confusing and dangerous. Phantom, like a house cat, was docile and contained, but like a cat had claws, Phantom had power, it hummed under his skin and in the odd green flecks in his eyes.

That was why Phantom was his favourite. Power danced in his entire being, and thus, danced in Freakshows being as well. "The next half of the show is starting soon" he made a _kissy_ noise. Like you would when calling a cat. Almost robotically Phantom stood up, the boy moved over to his master, before pausing.

Behind the boxes Megan glanced over at Conner, neither of them could quite see the boys face, it being mostly obscured by the back of the ringmaster. One thing they both noticed though, was the white—albeit dirty—hair on top of the boys head. Somewhat like the boy in the picture they had been shown.

Behind the boy, _Phantom_ , Sheik cringed slightly, she could feel another presence, in fact, she could feel two unknown presences. It was odd. She was used to humans, there were almost always humans in the tent during the show. What was confusing was the very distinct not human aura she could see poking through the cracks in the boxes. It highlighted the two of them—only to ghost eyes of course—but that didn't change the fact. Much like one would see through a thermographic camera, the aura outlined them. Both of the auras were _golden_ , the boys seemed far too young for his body, which was odd, and the girls seemed older, despite her rather young looking outline. Sheik didn't know what to think. They were both golden though, so she wasn't too worried anyway.

Sheik had known the two mystery creatures were there for a long while. She had noticed them in the audience when she started to pick up on their psychic link. Not well enough to understand anything, but definitely well enough for her to realize they were definitely communicating _telepathically_.

 _How odd_ , she had a feeling Phantom would enjoy their company if he ever got out of the hole he had dug and hid himself in.

In the back of her mind, the red mist whispered sweetly.

Gimme a break, gimme a break, gimme a break of the review bar. I like my slogans what can I say? Also! What's the worst chirstmas/birthday present you've ever gotten. When my brother was 3 he got a paper shredder from my grandma, and when I was six the same grandma gave me a zucchini.


	6. He Tried To Break Away

**Momentum**

 _Chapter 6_

 ** _He Tried To Break Away_**

 **

In which a fight is won, a fight is

lost, and what was once lost, is found. 

-0-

**

Freakshow spun around, rather suddenly, and with both Megan and Conner peeking out at the time, they had no place to hide. The albino mans eye widened if only a fraction, before it was covered up by his normal manic grin. " _Guest_!" He announced rather suddenly, in a false cheer. Phantoms eyes shot to the two _golden_ auraed beings—they weren't human, he could tell—there was a boy and a girl, dressed up in Halloween style gothic outfit. Blacks and greys, and reds. Like _blood_. Like _his blood_. "And what are you two doing back _here_? The show is out _there_!" Freakshow questioned with wild and expressive hand movements. Behind him, Phantom had resecured the mask onto his face and moved forward to stand behind the man. When the team only got into tense, well hidden defensive stances, Freakshow laughed. "I _guess_ ," he spoke in an odd way, as if everything to him was hilarious.

Megan only thought about how similar this Freakshow character, and the Joker really were. Eyes facing forward she waited for Freakshow to continue. They didn't know how aggressive he would be. Quickly sending a metal call to the other team members, Megan narrowed her eyes. "I _guess_ ," Freakshow repeated, "we'll have to do this, the _hard way_ " and suddenly the masked boy was rushing them. The other lady, _Sheik_ , stayed back, floating in the air.

Conner leaped forward with an enraged shout. Phantom followed suit, the met in the middle, fist colliding, sending them both reeling back. Conner, seeing an opening swung his fist into the side of Phantoms head, who stumbled over, letting out a cough, his breath was laboured, even Megan from across the room could hear it. Conner frowned slightly, before continuing to fight. Phantom sucked in a deep breath of air before gaining his barings and once again running at Conner. He grabbed a hold of the boys outstretched arm and spun around him, landing a firm kick to the back of Conners head, who let out another shout of frustration, before spinning around.

Megan stared at the green, _floating, red eyed_ woman in front of her. She didn't understand what the woman was doing, just standing—floating, was she _Martian_? Megan didn't know how to feel about the fact that this lady may indeed be a _Martian_ —there, not doing anything. That was when she felt it. A pushing force in her mind, it _hurt_ , it hurt so much, Megan let out a cry of surprise. Tears lining her eyes as she grabbed at her head. Trying to mentally push the force back she was able to, for only a minute before it came back full force. Glancing over at Conner revealed he was having the same problem, curled over clutching his head in pain. Beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Megan let out a final cry, feeling more than seeing the other team members enter the room, only to also double over.

Phantom rubbed the side of his head, an annoyed look on his face as he glanced up at the still floating form of Sheik above him. "I hate it when you do that." He mumbled turning around to try to fix his mask, he would be in so much trouble if Master found out he _cracked_ his mask in the fight. Behind him Sheik gave a small smile, that akin to one a mother would to their child. Phantom didn't see with his back turned.

" _So_ " he questioned slowly glancing around—Freakshow had long since run off, _the show must go on_ and all that—they supposed that the had to get rid of the _bodies_. Phantom shivered. They weren't _bodies_ , they were just people, people that were knocked out, but still people. Not _bodies_. "We sorta gotta, take" he stuck her thumb back towards the knocked out people behind him. " _Them_ somewhere." Sheik nodded, before lifting the team up. "Lemme help" Phantom insisted, before focusing enough to carry Robin, the boy he had seen before. "Did you do the memory thing?" He asked as they moved out from the cart, their bodies— _bodies_ —masked in invisibility.

Sheik nodded, "they _will_ remember, but it will be blurred. They will not know your, or my or any of the others faces." Phantom smiled and nodded. Sheik was cool like that. Her powers were, confusing at best. She was a psychic or a fortune teller of sorts when she was alive from what Phantom could tell, and when she died she was gifted with the ability of what she claimed in life. Phantom wasn't really sure of her powers, he knew that at some point she had told him them all but, his memory was odd. Some days he'd wake up knowing things he didn't know before, other times he'd refer to himself as _Danny_ , one time he forgot his name _entirely_. He spent most of that day hiding in the red mist hoping nothing _too_ big would happen. "—ey will believe that they came to investigate, but found nothing adrift." Oh. She was still talking, really he didn't want to be rude, it wasn't his fault it was so easy to space out. He liked space. _Why did he know that._

They lay out the team in the field a couple miles off from the old train tracks—which were a lot farther from the new ones than Phantom remembered. Sheik just dropped them from the air—Phantom placed Robin down because he was good—he also spent the entire walk—fly?—back lecturing Sheik on how she _shouldn't hurt the humans_ , if Sheik has seen the flash of bright, almost toxic in colour, _green_ in Phantoms eyes, she didn't say a word.

 _Obsessions_ were powerful, a ghost didn't necessarily know their obsession in the first place, in fact most were born—created—wandering the zone without a clue of who they were and what their obsession was, or is, until they found something to hint it. It also wasn't uncommon for a ghost to misinterpret their obsession, if they weren't actively looking for it. Phantom only wanted to please.


	7. But Was Only Pulled In Deeper

Fnf, is actually gonna kill me. My : keep disappearing so if they're not here, I'm sorry. It keeps trying to edit them out. Anyway, I'm keeping the same question as yesterday, scariest thing to ever happen to you. I don't personally have anything, but yo. I might also miss tomorrow or the day after that but I'm not sure yet. 

Buterflypuss: good chap. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: thats kind of what I was trying to go for for the characters, I'm glad it actually some what worked. As for Maddie and Jack, people cope in different ways, burrying themselves in their work is one of them. I hope you also have a good day. Thanks for the comments. 

**Momentum**

 _Chapter 7_

 _ **But Was Only Pulled In Deeper**_

In which one remembers, one

does not, and all are left disoriented. 

-0-

Robin awoke slowly, groaning soft as he sat up. Except, he wasn't on his bed, he furrowed his eyes in confusion. Gripping at the grass on the ground, grass, not a blanket. Sitting fully up with wide eyes he quickly looked around. He, and the rest of the team were in an open field, blue and yellow flowers dotted the surrounding area in large patches of tall grasses, trees surrounded them in each direction, and distantly he could hear the sounds of birds, frogs, and other creatures of the sort chirping. Robin quickly realized it was a new day, meaning he had slept out here all night long. It was around noon now, judging only from the position the sun was, he didn't know how accurate that really _could_ be though, since there were dark clouds covering most of the sky.

Reaching into his belt—never left home without it—he pulled out a small cell-like device. 11:56pm read the clock on it. Glancing around once again he noticed that his team was sprawled around him. Megan was the second to wake up, as Robin stood up, he heard it, she let out a sharp gasp, sitting up and rapidly looking around. "Where are we?" She finally asked Robin after noticing he was also awake. The unusually frown that was on her face only deepened when Robin looked unsurely at her. "Should we get the others up?" Megan asked, standing up to move towards Conner. Seeing Robin nod, she moved to wake up Conner and Zatanna, while Robin moved to wake up Artemis and Wally.

"So no one remembers _anything_?" Robin asked for the fourth time as they wandered through the woods. "Not a thing?" There was no way in hell, that they were going to call Batman over this, even though it was probably dumb, it was a simple mission, and they weren't exactly thinking straight in the first place. Even if it took all day they would make it home by themselves.

Megan shrugged, a troubled expression on her face as she spoke. "I remember going to the show, and then going backstage with Conner, because he thought something was _off_?" She glanced over at him to confirm, when Conner said nothing Megan continued. "And we were spying on these two performers when Freakshow—the ringmaster—came in and then, it's all kind of blurry. Maybe we got kicked out?"

"Something about this seems," Robin paused, they were nearing the city, he could hear it in the rushing sounds of cars and the booming noises of people talking. " _Wrong_."

Wally snorted. "Master detective!" He said jokingly, only being rewarded with a light, smiling, glare. "So basically none of us remember anything? _Freaky_."

"Your oddly calm about this." Artemis commented as they walked, her head moving to look around. Checking for ambushes or people in the trees. You never knew, and this entire situation was way to off. When Wally only shrugged, she rolled her eyes and continued to look around. Now that she thought of it, they all felt oddly calm, it was most likely an aftereffect of whatever made their minds all fuzzy and their memories confusing. A part of her was almost tempted to believe that it was perfectly normal, that there wasn't as nothing weird with Circus Gothica, and that this feeling was just something everyone felt when leaving.

-0-

When the team finally returned back to the city, the first thing they did was return home, other than Wally who went to the nearest street food stand, and _then_ went home. Robin was exhausted, he wasn't even sure why he was this tired. He just _was_. "You didn't return," was the first thing said to him when he walked into the manor, it only took him a rather embarrassing moment to fully process the words that left Bruce's mouth.

"There was a thing." He waved his hand slightly. "With the circus. One minute we're backstage, the next in a field, Megan couldn't call for the bio-ship so we had to walk back." Dick explained. Bruce frowned in thought.

"Go get some rest." He finally said after a moment. "I'll check things out." Dick nodded tiredly before moving to go to his bedroom.

-0-

"Phantom!" Freakshow angrly called into the train cart, watching as only a moment later Phantom appeared. He held up his phone, on the screen was a security camera feed from only a few days earlier. It was a freeze frame of him. Entering the shop in a human guise. "You weren't supposed to just _waltz_ in there! You were _supposed_ to just go in invisibly and _take. The. Damn. Food!_ " He punctuated each word with a hit over Phantoms head using his sceptre.

He—Phantom—didn't really pay much mind to the scepter. He wasn't sure exactly what it did, but he could assume that it was what made the red fog, and since he actually _liked_ the red fog. He saw no problems with it. The one thing he _did_ have a problem with, was being too near the orb. It gave him headaches, instead of a warm blacketing feeling that made him happy, it was a harsh _drag_ , ringing hands around his neck and pulling him down. Drowning him in a sea of reds and blacks. Each hit over the head only seemed to worsen the feeling in his brain, at first it hurt, then it was all he could think of, then it was all he could understand, then all he could hear was the echo of his masters voice as he yelled. "Pathetic" he heard a distant voice speak.

 _(Master Master Master Master Master)_

A voice repeated inside of his head. The sound of something—what was it? Why couldn't he focus?—hitting the ground was all too distant to him. It was like he was living inside of a dream. He couldn't see anymore, when he flicked his eyes around the room there was just _red, red, red._ When he blinked, nothing changed. He could barely feel anything either, the clothing on his back, the hair on his head, the tears streaming down his face. All foreign, _foreign_ feelings. Like he wasn't really there. Just a blank observer in someone else's life.

 _Dislocation_ he remembered his _sister_ saying while describing a feeling so similar to this. _Why did he know_ _that?_ He didn't have a sister did he? _Why did he know that?_ Who was he? _Why did he know that?_ Where was he? _Why did he know that?_ Why was he here? "M-my name—" _why did he know that?_ "My name is—" _know that? Why? Why?_ "Is—is Da—" _that? Know why did he?_ "Danny Fent—"

 _"Shut up!"_

 _Darkness._


	8. Crimson Clouds Cover Blue Skies

**Big** (ha) oc action in this. Well, there's no action but, the characters I've mentioned in previous chapters are in this one. We've got Finks, and Big and Sheik and I love them all. Sorry if they're really crappy.

Detectivemaps: thank you!

SonicMax: I'm a terrible person I know. Does Jazz know though? Possibly.

MultiFandomLover99: oh boy. Big stuff is happening. They'll find out, eventually.

Bellmitch Kritznovah: aaaaahhhhhhhhh finally! I don't know if anyone else actually noticed this but yes!! It's a poem! Finally.

BananaRock509: all in good time.

Locky3670: thank you!

 **NEWS CONCERNING HOW IM GOING TO SPLIT THIS STORY UP AT THE END PLEASE READ IT ITS KIND OF IMPORTANT.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 8_

 ** _Crimson Clouds Cover Blue Skies_**

In which new memories make old ones

return, at family is not defined but blood. 

-0-

"—o anyway, did you ever get to see one of the shows? David said it was _sick_!" Dick couldn't help but overhear two of his classmates talking about the circus he had been to just a few days ago. It was now Friday afternoon. "There was this dude, and he was just like—flying through the air! It was crazy. You shudda' come." Dick frowned, was the circus leaving, did they miss their chance to do an easy investigation—not really easy for the others, easy for him since he was right in the area—apparently, and according to the two kids conversation, they had.

"Wish I could've seen it. I'll have to look for some videos online." And with that final statement the two kids walked away, both heading off to class. Dick did the same, an odd expression on his face as he moved.

-0-

When the droning, _ringing, ticking_ sound echoing his mind clear somewhat, he was able to see again. The world was still tinted a dark, luminescent red colour. From the staff, he assumed. Trying to figure out why he was where he was, seemed like a good idea. Of course that was until the thunderous headache dully thrumming in the back of his head returned, full force.

The pain, and the surprise was enough to send him jerking back, which only caused more pain. Doubling over he let a soft whimper out, screwing his eyes shut and curling into a ball. "Phantom" he could hear a voice call softly, his only response was tightening himself smaller into a ball, only wanted to escape the noises that sounded all too loud to his overly sensitive ears. " _Phantom_." The voice called again.

When he only whimpered, a hand reached out. He could feel it moving through the wind. Tensing he readied himself for a blow. Soft, delicate hands reached under his chin, slowly moving, tilting his head up. He, not knowing what else to do followed and allowed the hand to slowly, lift his head up to face them.

There was a girl, with floaty long black hair that exploded around her head in dark halo. She had kind eyes, and some kind of punk looking eyepatch thing. There was dark makeup? He wasn't sure, that rounded around one or her eyes. Making the left eye look like it was robotic. Briefly he thought about how cool it was. "Are you alright?" Her accent was thick, _French_ he realized after a moment.

"Who're you?" He slurred after a moment of just _staring_ at her. She gave him a sad look. Like he had forgotten his entire life—had he? He couldn't seem to remember a thing. Just basic skills. Places in the world, what objects were called. Nothing specific. Who was he?—or like he had just lived though some horrific event. "Who'm I?" He asked after a moment, quietly, unsurely. Like a small kid left in a dark room for too long. Unsure of what was and wasn't real.

Above him, the woman shook her head. "Your name is Phantom." She explain, and her stared at her in pure confusion. _Phantom_. What kind of name was _Phantom_. It was spooky, sure and weird. A small part of him liked it though. It would work. "And I am Sheik. I didn't have a name before." She explained. "You named me, because you said my hairstyle was _sheik_."

Phantom looked more confused. "I named you?" He asked quietly. When the woman only nodded he titled his head once again, ignoring the renewed pounding and stabbing that his head seemed to cling to. "That's weird." He commented trying to stand up, when he was halfway up he suddenly collapsed. His legs buckling below him, sending him crippling to the ground in a small heap. " _Ouch_ " he moaned quietly.

"You shouldn't stand up." Commented another voice. "Names Finks. Don't know why. You've got a weird head kid." Introduced a rather small, chubby man with long, greasy hair. " _Master_ " he spit the world out like it was _poison_ , like it was the name of evil. "Really give you quite the _beating_."

"An' with 'is stick-staff thing." Added another voice. Phantoms head swiveled to face a large man with short, _black as midnight_ hair. His accent was odd. Phantom couldn't figure it out. "I'm Bigs. 'An ya'll wonder why?" He let out a hearty laugh, shaking his large shoulders up and down.

Phantom blinked at the group, staring at each one of them with an odd, unreadable expression. He then looked at his hair. It was _white_. "You all have black hair. Why don't I?" He asked after a moment.

Bigs let out another laugh, cringing as it turned into a pained cough. "Damn smokin' habits" he muttered under his breath, before brightening up. "Ya do sometimes kid!" When Phantom continued to look puzzled, and the other encouraged him to continue he did. "Don't know 'ow _but_! Sometimes when Mr. Masta need some'ody tah do some _spy work_ 'e'll 'ave you go in. 'Cept you'll 'ave blue eyes an' black 'air. 'Ey call ya a _Halfuh_ " He explain. Phantom didn't bother to ask who _they_ was. He could assume the other ghost, or maybe the Master.

" _Halfa_ , Big. Not _halfuh_." Corrected Finks in a joking tone. He mumbled off a _yeh, yeh._ In response, both ghost turned away, Big sticking his head _through_ the train cart to see how far they'd gotten.

"We'll be there soon. Stop being impatient." Chided Sheik softly. She didn't really look to be the soft spoken French woman she seemed to be. The rock, punk aesthetic she was dressed in did not help her case. "Also it's _Hal-fa"_ she corrected playfully causing all the ghost in the room to groan, minus Phantom of course. Who was only confused on why they were fighting over how to _pronounce_ a word, even when they were basically all saying it the same.

"'At's just yer ack-cent Sheik" Big informed her, who just threw her hands up in the air and let out a groan.

"Have you listened to yourself?" She replied eyes lighting up at the incoming argument. "' _Coz I know I 'ave!"_ Finks snickered and Phantom looked even more confused. Did they _always_ do this?

The train cart bumped as it hit a rock or something on the track. "So where are we going?" Phantom finally asked.

"'Appy 'arbour" was the response.

"Happy harbour" Finks _translated_. "Neither of those two can pronounce it."

"Aye! I can pronounce it 'erfectly fine!"

 _"Oui! Moi aussi!"_ Sheik paused, a confused expression on her face. "Yeah, me too." She translated after a moment of hesitation. Both Big and Finks raised their eyebrows in disbelief.

"How long until we get there?" Phantom finally asked after a moment. His memories were somewhat coming back. He still didn't know what got his master so angry in the first place, but he at least knew where he was.

Without warning his head was pushed _through the wall of the cart_. Phantom, in sudden surprise yet out a cry of surprise. Staring with wide eyes he realized he couldn't see anything. Sheik was _also_ sticking her head out of the train. The sun was setting over the distant mountains. "Wow" Phantom couldn't help but murmur, he _hadn't_ remembered what a sunset looked like, and seeing one for the _first time_ was truly something amazing.

"See that?" The French woman asked, sticking her hand out to point at a city in the distance. "That's 'appy 'arbour up there." Behind her Phantom grinned, continuing to keep his head out even when she moved back into the train cart.

He could see it, in the distance, even better now that there wasn't a head in the way. Happy Harbour stood proudly in the distance. He could see Mount Justice, just the corner of it but still. Getting an idea, he entered the cart once more. Ignoring the amused looks of the other ghost, before sticking his head out the other side. There were _boats_. Large, gleaming sailboats, and brightly coloured speedboats lined the docs and shores. The sunset blanketing the entire city in a mask of orange and pink.

Phantom stuck his head back into the train. "Better than Gotham." He said finally, a large, excited grin spreading across his face.

-0-

Okay so I have the story split up into 3 main _acts_ of sorts and each act has three _sub acts._ These are the acts and sub acts. We are currently in _Blink And It's Gone, Circus Boy_. Which is the first sub act of the first act. I want to know if you guys would prefer one _really long book_ with all three acts in it, or _three shorter books_ with only the sub acts. I won't tell you what happens in each (sub)act, because spoilers but I'm sure you can figure out some things from the titles.

Blink And It's Gone (like a season 1)

•Circus Boy

•Best Of Worst Worlds

•Happy Tears

Stuttering Heart (like a season 2)

•Being Human, Taught By Two Aliens

•Not The Only One

•Work Above All Else

Define Family (like a season 3)

•Looks Like Someone I Used To Know

•Remembering What He Didn't Want To

•Conflicting Beliefs


	9. Tearing Away Reality

Davidscrazy234: hi David lol. I just kind of reached for the first name I could thing of.

Pandemi: Yeah I agree, I was kind of leaning towards making it one long book mostly because I'm lazy and don't like the process of actually going through and setting up a story. I mostly wrote this story because I also love hating Freakshow, and was _also_ disappointed by the lack of fics lol.

BananaRock509: so far, your in luck. I'm most likely gonna do all in one.

Buterflypuss: good chap

Bellmitch Kritznovah: your name shows up in my auto complete now lol. And yeah. It was a poem. I don't actually have the full thing written out anywhere since I kind of _don't really have all the chapters planned._ Just vegue ideas of what _needs_ to happen. Danny's great. I felt like I needed some fluff before I crush everyone's soul with this chapter. It's probably gonna be one book cause I'm lazy and that's what people are voting so your in luck. Last of all, thanks. Fun fact, I based Big's accent was based off a character in a book I reads accent. I made Danny not know where it was from, because I _didn't_ know where it was from. _Oops,_

Britt299919: thank you so much! I'm actually really surprised that people love this story so much. Like woe? This makes me so happy. I think I'm probably gonna do all in one because as mentioned before, I'm lazy and I don't like doing the process of choosing genres and ratings and pictures and all that. Idk though.

Shinigami no Koneko: yup.

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 9_

 _ **Tearing Away Reality**_

In which take out is ordered,

and mistakes are made

 **Warning: light swearing and a panic attack are described in this chapter. If you want a description of what happened because you don't want to read. Message me, the panic attack is based off my own experience so it might not be accurate to someone else's.**

Unloading the carts and boxes was always his least favourite part. Mostly because it was always _hot_ , and for whatever reason he didn't like hot weather at _all_. Lydia was once again, over seeing them. Not literally, she wasn't flying or floating or anything of the sorts. She was simply walking around making sure that the workers were actually doing their work.

Phantom's head still hurt, in fact his entire body _still hurt,_ but he couldn't complain at this point. He'd done something bad. He was hurt, and it was his fault. Blinking away the harsh, all to bright light of the sun he glanced to see what the others were doing. He could hear Sheik, humming a soft, lonely, forgotten tune. He actually knew the tune quite well from her always singing or humming it. He even knew a few of the French Lyrics. Not enough to sing, but Phantom tried to pride himself in the fact that he knew a little bit.

Sometimes the other ghost would try to teach him things. Not _normal_ things, not _useful_ things. Weird, weird things. Like _math_ , one plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four. He didn't know much beyond that. Six plus four was ten. Was another he had memorized. Big was the one who taught him math the most, he seemed really good at it. Sometimes when they found chalk rocks he would write these fancy equation things on the cart walls. Phantom never understood them—who used _letters_ in _math_?—nor did he _try_ to understand them.

Sometimes Finks would teach him somewhat useful things. He once explained how plants worked, which was cool, and how rain didn't cause the Earth to flood. Whenever Phantom got those memories of loving space, he'd talk to Finks for _hours_. Sheik taught him words in _French_ every once in awhile. _Bonjour_ , and _ca va_ , he wasn't very good at French.

-0-

Going on his _lunch break_ in public was weird. Freakshow knew of the suspicions on the circus and wanted the _cast_ to be seen out and about. Walking along the street was an odd experience. He kept trying to avoid flinching every time somebody moved too close to him. Phantom was not a fan of touchy people. What he was wearing didn't help either. It was one of the _staff_ shirts. Black mainly, with a weird graphic design of the other ghost and him surrounding Freakshow and his spooky staff. _Staff_ was written under in a odd _punk font._ He was also in his lesser form. Black hair and blue eyes. Less power.

Walking into some small, family owned Chinese food place, he glanced around. The room was warmly lit, casting the area in a constant _golden hour_ hue. There were bright, red, lanterns hung from the ceiling, it was rather beautiful. The seating arrangements were all decorated with red flowers and golden designs carved into the wood. He officially liked it in here.

Now, it was time to order. "Uhm—" he paused before listing off a few things, this was probably the most he was going to get to eat for a long while. Rice, lemon chick, and a packet of vegetables. He knew it was probably not a good idea to eat things so sporadically but he couldn't help it. He was _hungry_.

Standing towards the back of the small shop he waited patiently for the food to be done. It was peaceful, that was until someone walked into the store. She was a redhead, that was the first thing he noticed. Her skin was fair, and her eyes were a hazeley brown, and her aura was _golden_. There was something about her, that made Phantoms head buzz. _You know her_. It whispered, but for the life—ehm, _death_ —of him he could not figure out why. As far as he knew he had never seen her before. Right?

"Hello!" She greeted the woman at the cashier as she began to order. The list was _long_ , and the lady made a joke about feeding an army, it seemed to make the girl far too nervous. Her laugh was slightly forced. Like she _was_ feeding an army. As the girl finished ordering she _also_ moved to the back of the shop. Standing next to Phantom, who tensed noticeably.

The girl glanced over at him. When they met eyes she gave him a smile, and Phantom smiled lightly back. It turned to more of a grimace which left him awkwardly looking away. He could still feel the girls eyes on him, traveling to his shirt. "Oh!" She said with a smile. "You work for Circus Gothica?" She asked with a smile. "I saw one of their shows. I'm Megan by the way." She finally introduced.

Phantom stared trying to figure out what his name was. "Uhm, yeah." He said answering her question. "I'm Danny" he finally said. Remembering his name after a moment.

Megan smiled softly, sensing how uncomfortable the boy seemed. "Not the social type?" She asked. Phantom shrugged. Continuing to glance away, finally after what felt like an eternity his food was done. Awkwardly going up he picked it up and left. Avoiding all eye contact as he brushed past the girl briefly touching her, he apologized and then made his way out of the store.

The streets were busy. People rushing this way and that as Phnatom tried his best to avoid them. Bringing his shoulders up and hunching over slightly in a low-status posture. He was beyond nervous, too many people. Not really looking where he was going he suddenly bumped into someone. It was a tall man, a suit and tie, with a generally aura of _get out of my way or suffer._ Phantom let out a surprise yelp. "Hey!" The man yelled, looking down at his suit. Hot cafine had stained it, leaving a very noticeable _stain_ where the white was. "Watch where your fucking going!" And then it began.

"Im—I'm sorry." He quietly whispered. "I can—uh. I can—" he slowly reached his hand out, before jerking back when the man made a move to swat at his hand.

"Don't" he hissed, pointing at Phantoms hand. "There's coffee on your hand." He pointed out.

Blood rushed in Phantoms ears, he wasn't paying attention anymore. All he could hear was the repeating sound of yelling. _Freakshows_ yelling. His hands slowly reached up to hold is head. There was too much noise. The world became distant, he was only really aware of how harsh his breathing was, and the distant sounds of people asking _is he okay?_ Someone reached out a hand to touch him and he jerked back, whimpering slightly he curled to the ground. Another person reached out to touch him, and he shot up, rushing off towards the circus train cart.

Bursting into the cart he threw himself into the nearest corner curling up and trying to hide. Sobbing slightly as he tried to curl up smaller. The other ghost in the cart all shared a look, they couldn't really approach, and they weren't trained or anything to know what to do in this situation. So they stood back and waited it out. Not knowning what else to do.

-0-

Megan only stared at the retreating form of the boy. The back of his shirt proudly announced that he was _Staff_ , and she wondered if _all_ the staff were like that. It somewhat reminded her of when she first came to Earth. When she was unsure of how to act in the presence of other people, _human people._

It was _odd_.

-0-

Phantom didn't like the _staff_ shirts at all, mostly because of their _double meaning_. Other than the cheap fabric and weird fit, it was pretty okay. _Staff_. You are staff, you are a worker. You are an employee. _Staff_. You belong to the _staff_. You don't have a right to free will. You belong to the Master. It made him _shiver_. He was nothing and didn't deserve to talk to humans. The echoes of his masters words filled his mind. At least he had calmed down from his panic attack.

-0-

If the spacing seemed weird in this one, the panic attack scene was added _after_ I had already finished. Sorry.


	10. He Tried To Be Brave

Buterflypuss: good chap

Davidscrazy234: I don't really think I want a pair for Danny since mentally he's not really ready for that. If that makes sense plus I don't want it to be distracting or anything from the main plot.

Detectivemaps: boom! Ici. _Here_

Bananarock509: ho boy. Your in for a ride.

Bellmitch Kritznovah: I was trying to figure out what to make Danny say and basically just like _you know what I don't like. Using letters in math._ The panic attack was basically just, I got really freaked out over something, then stuff just piled up. I'm fine. Thanks for worrying though! I'm glad that the chapters are easier to read. Fnf is _not_ deleting my -0-s which is always nice. Finally by crushing everyone's soul, I mean stuffs gonna go down in the coming chapters,

Super sorry for not being able to post yesterday. I _was_ gonna but by the time I had actually finished the chapter it was midnight and there was no point in posting it. On other news, I'm finished watching YJ season 1 (I was watching it while writing) and am currently like halfway through season two, **SPOILERS FOR YJ** and ho boy nothing makes me more stressed then the possibility of the world ending. ALSO! **Spoilers over.** Special thanks to Gaia(Mumsy) on the YJ/DP discord for indirectly reminding me that _I forgot to write Aqualad into this._ Also thanks for the excuse on where he was.

 _Update:_ hey I have chapter 11 written and edited and all that but I _really_ don't like it. Like _hating it with a burning passion_ kind of don't like. Soooo, yeah. It's not gonna get posted. I'm really tired. So the story might be on a mini hiatus. I'm super sorry. Once I'm in better mental health, I'll try to update it. Also a big thanks to _The Blank Page Syndrome_ for correcting my French.

~Friendly neighbourhood Tenuem

 **Warnings: possibly bad French, shows of abuse, mentions of abuse, mentions of character death**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 10_

 ** _He Tried To Be Brave_**

In which a boy pays for what is

not his own, and bids his luck goodbye

-0-

Phantom knew that they were there, far before he had seen them. The _shining, bright, golden auras_ just sitting up above the tent were enough to tell him. Part of him was glad that only a few ghost had the ability to read or see auras. The other part of him didn't want to have to deal with the possibility of a confrontation. Or, the fact that if Freakshow found out, he'd be beat for not telling and then ordered to report back to him the minute anyone with a weird glow came near him or the tent. Sheik and him would keep their powers as a secret.

" _Phantom_!" Came a voice, yelling, shrieking, _Freakshow_. The albino man strode into the train cart phantom had sat himself in. Using his _sceptre_ as a walker of sorts as he moved towards the boy, his _limp_ only slightly visible. One of the other ghost had _bit_ Freakshow last night. Part of Phantom wished he was there to actually see it. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you looked at it. He was not there though, and he'd have to _live_ —ha—with it for the rest of his afterlife.

Phantom stood alert, letting the feeling of the red mist cover his mind, glazing his brain. It's syrupy and sweetness coaxing him, he couldn't live without it. It was _addicting_. _Phantoms the whipping-boy._ "You. Were. Supposed. To. _Protect_. Me." Each word is punctuated with a step forward, 'Me' was with a slap. The force sends his head reeling to one side. It stays frozen, as a bruise forms on the left side of his head. "Tell me _boy_ ," his tone is low, dangerous. A tiger stalking its prey. _Waiting, waiting, waiting until._ Phantoms chin is roughly grasped. His head being guided, titled from left to right. He's being examined. He feels like _prey_.

The silence in the tent is _deafening_. Phantoms—pointless—harsh breathing is really the only noise. The outside word no longer exists. He counts the heart beats. Six fast heart beats, and one above average one— _Freakshow_. Phantom could only assume that the six _extra_ heart beats where from the golden auras up above in the rafters—or what were really just wooden beams to hold the tents up—since it wasn't showtime currently.

There was the sound of a soft gasp as Freakshow began to beat down on him. Yelling things as Phantom let the red fog take him. He knew that he'd feel the bruises later but those were always more easy to ignore than then the original blows.

-0-

Megan made eye contact with the others. The sounds of the boy below— _Phantom_ —soft cries echoed throughout the tent. **_We have to do something. We can't just leave him!_**

 ** _On three_** Aqualad counted _**One, two, now!**_ But they hesitated, Freakshow had stopped his abuse. Standing up and brushing a strange _green_ liquid off of his hands. There was no point now. The team watched as a girl slowly moved forward and towards the fallen boy. Behind her, a muscular man and a smaller, shorter man.

They slowly approached the crippled boy on the floor, Megan made a shift to move down to them but Aqualad raised a hand to stop her. "Wait" he whispered.

"Phantom?" Called the woman softly, moving around the fallen boys body, to his front and into his view. His eyes were cloudy and hazy, half lidded and dull. Megan stared with wide, wide eyes.

-0-

"Phantom?" Sheik called again softly. Moving her hand to sweep drifty, white, strand of hair out of his face. Phantom only let out a soft whining noise. "Oh _mon petit"_ _My little one._ "Est-ce que tu vas bien?" _Are you alright?_ Phantom stared at her through half-lidded eyes.

Taking in rasping breaths of air he tried to make sense of the scene in front of him. His lungs felt like fire. Each shuddering breath send jagged knives of pain down his throat and into his lungs. He twitched briefly, but that only served to send him spasming slightly before falling limp.

Sheik sighed, carefully lifting Phantoms body, she moved. Pausing every few seconds when he let out gasps in pain and violent spasms. Big hesitantly moved forward, followed by Finks. "'ere lemme 'elp." But Sheik shook her head.

"We shouldn't move him too much. I'm sorry" she finished with a whisper. Sheik could only watch as Phantoms eyes flickered around the room, he didn't seem to be processing anything around the room. Just simply looking around mindlessly through dull red eyes.

Slowly Phantom reached a hand up, startling both Sheik and the two other ghost who had moved to walk behind her. Sheik inhaled sharply. Pausing her walking she stared. Phantoms hand slowly moved up to her head, his small hand curling around a clump of dark black hair.

"Maman? J-Je ne veux pas m-mourir."

 _I don't want to die._


	11. To Sit Still And Behave

Buterflypuss: good chap

Fricat P: hhhhhh I've another reply on this, with a different answer but I saw it first. Oops, sorry! Also I wanted to point out that I _am_ the translator and that my school couldn't care less about their FSL program so I'm mostly self taught.

Miss mysteri: I'm always so startled by the fact that people actually like this story? Like the idea to me sounds completely bizarre.

Pheonix-inferno18: dope username btw, I hope you enjoy where I take it.

Britt299919: you are the second person to comment on my story, that I've read from. I've been keeping up with your dp crossover since it was posted lol, and yes. You are a very cruel person to Danny. **People go read this wonderful person stuff it's pretty edgy(TM)**

The Blank Page Syndrome: once again thank you so much for helping me with my god awful French skills. **Go check out this person too. They're pretty fly.**

Kg.gutierrez76: did you actually cry? I feel ALL POWERFUL! I kind of base where I want the chapter to end when I can find a chiffhanger, mostly because I love my dramatics. This ones a bit longer. Keep in mind I write a chapter in one day, and then edit it the next so,

Blueguy100: I'm glad you enjoy.

 **This chapter is brought to you by, absolutely no one.**

 _Cough... did someone say hiatus? No I think you misheard... cough._

 **WARNINGS: extensive use of the comma, broken bones mentioned, light swearing, I think. Some great unknowing bat dad action, and possible ooc-ness because how the frick frock am I supposed to write angst king Batman. Please send help. Possible grammar stuff because I rewrote/changed the plot of this entire chapter. Dezzy.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 11_

 _ **To Sit Still And Behave**_

In which a bat helps a ghost, without realizing 

it, and glimpses into the past are gained

Phantom awoke with a gasp, cold sweat covered his body, leaving a sheen that seemed to almost _glisten_ in the moonlight. His—rather unnecessary—breaths came out in short, painful gasps, leaving him dry heaving from inhaling too much. Rolling over to his side with a groan, Phantom let his eyes wander. He was—not where he should've been. There was no circus tent, or train cart, or stacked—stolen—hay beds. The only noise was the distant echoes of the highway and the occasional bird or frog chip. There was also the constant humming of the street lamps that only someone with above average hearing could really ever hear.

He was on the sidewalk, with no memory of how or when he got here. The red mist brushed against his mind gently. He always hated this. 'Waking up' from the mist mid-mission. It left him confused and disoriented, and he couldn't for the life of him figure out why he was just _laying on the sidewalk_. That wasn't exactly one of his normal activities. Trying to sit up proved to be a mistake, it left him feeling a strong sense of vertigo zigzagging down is spine. Phantom let out a quiet groan at the feeling. His head _hurt_. Explosions of pain rippling through his mind.

Moving to bring his arm up to nurse his head proved to be a mistake. It was broken? That was new. He hadn't ever broken a bone before— _every other week [redacted] and [redacted] had helped him patch up his arm or his leg. Sometimes the bone would poke through he hated that the mo_ —Phantom didn't want to even _think_ about what _that_ was. The visions blinking through his head _just_ fast enough for him to acknowledge, too fast for him to understand.

Dragging his feet underneath of him, he carefully dragged his body up and into a sitting position. Examining his body proved that he was in his superior form. Pale white locks of hair drifted around his head almost like they were underwater, he wore dark, black, baggy, sweatpants and a old black shirt. Fastened around his neck was a long, dark, cape like thing. _Grim reaper_ , his head informed him. He almost nodded, catching himself seconds before he started. It would surely be painful.

Phantoms glow—aura—was dim, occasionally flickering completely out before slowly creeping back to a low tremor. In his chest he could feel his core _purring_. A rather embarrassing sign to the fact that his body was trying to heal itself. How has he gotten hurt? Dragging his body off the sidewalk and into an alley he made sure he was well hidden. The sky was dark once more, and last he remembered it was at least noon. Meaning he had been in the red mist for a good couple hours.

Phantom glanced around nervously. He was in a new city. A city he'd hadn't really had the chance to explore before, other than quickly walking to that Chinese food place that one day, but considering he let the red guide him for most of the way. It didn't really count. Another thing he didn't really understand was what was going on, at this point even the golden auraed group of kids seemed easier to wrap his head around. Had he fallen suddenly while on a mission? Was he attacked? He didn't know. "Aki, aki, aki" _Okay, okay, okay_. "Chanti" he cursed softly. _Damnit_. "Shilk, shilk. Shilk" _Shit, shit. Shit_ His mind was scrambled and the English language seemed distant, dull and confusing. French even more so.

"Fokis Phantom." _Focus Phantom_. He mumbled softly to himself. "Aki, Loupen lep li?" _Okay, where am I?_ Glancing around him his eyes found a rather bright build board advertising some business with words he couldn't read. What he did understand though was the city name proudly printed in a painfully, bright, blue, colour. "Tan _Happy Harbour_ , may _thiir_ _evi_ diveenli." _In Happy Harbour, but **that** is obvious_. He couldn't help but mumble snarkily to himself. Glancing up at the sky he stared at the stars, easily viewed on the cloudless night sky.

-0-

"Little dipper, Big dipper, Cassiopeia." Absentmindedly Danny traced the stars with a finger from his houses rooftop. The soft of soft feet climbing up metal stairs behind him caused him to sit up, turning his body slightly to face the door to the roof. Jazz, he identified by the lightness of her footfalls. The doorknob jiggled slightly before it slowly _creeeeeeked_ open. His sisters head poking through sheepishly as she waved, opening the door fully Jazz creeped onto the roof and took a spot next to Danny.

"It's pretty late." She acknowledged, looking up at the stars, coping her brothers lax position. "Something keeping you up?" She asked with a hint of worry. That was Jazz for you. Always worrying always mother-henning, A student Jazz the Spazz. Danny couldn't help the slight grin that spread across his face at the thought of the dumb nickname even if he wanted to.

His smile didn't last long though, it slowly faded as he let out a heavy sigh. "Just—" he paused trying to get his mind in order. "Just _thinking_." He finally explained. Seeing his sister about to ask him a million questions he brushed her over with a lazy hand wave. "It's fine. Really." Danny said with a smile, faltering slightly at the worried look that stayed firmly on Jazz's face. Glancing down guiltily he tried again. "Look— I just." He swallowed, _should I tell her?_ Shaking his head slightly he glanced away once more. "It's nothing really." An easy grin spread across his face. "Just some regular teenage angst." Danny joked. Jazz smiled faintly, it never quite meeting her eyes. He didn't notice.

-0-

Phantom sighed exhausted, it was only getting harder and harder to stay in his superior form, the aura flickers leaving him without a visible aura for longer and longer periods of time. His overworked core purred almost painfully in his chest. Finally with a sigh Phantom let his form go, white rings washing over his body, baggy, black pants turned to old, ripped jeans. A rutty, black shirt into one of those _Staff_ Circus Gothica ones that he hated so much. He suppressed his core, trying to stop the actual _purring noise_ he was making. The last thing Phantom needed was people figuring out he wasn't normal.

That was when a dark shape dropped into the alleyway. The shape of a person with bat like ears on top of their head. Phantom let out a surprised yelp, launching himself backwards he let out a pained his as he landed on his right leg. The broken one. Staggering back he tried to remain upright and not show weakness in front of the Bat. Even if it didn't really matter, after all he _was_ in his lesser form, just a runaway nobody was his _cover story_ just in case he ever needed one.

"You're hurt" The Bat acknowledged, and Phantom mentally cursed. World's greatest detective. _Of course he would notice_. He then blinked, he understood _that_ , and unless the Bat suddenly learned _Loriven_ —one of the many ghost languages—he could at least understand English again. Phantom didn't—couldn't—trust his voice though. One word in an unknown language and it would be like Master said. Off to some freaky government lab to be experimented on.

Phantom slowly nodded in confirmation, yes he was hurt. There was a constant throbbing in his chest—but that was probably just his over exhausted core—along with his right leg and head. The red fog was not helping either. It pulsed with a message he could not decipher, and an energy he could not understand.

"Let me help" the Bat offered stepping forward, Phantom moved to take a step back, but stumbled over his broken leg, falling in a useless clump towards the end of the alleyway. "I'm not going to hurt you." the Bat explained, putting his hands up and slowly, _cautiously_ , moving towards the boy on the ground.

Phantom let the Bat get near with a guarded posture and look in his eyes. If the man was offering help with fixing his leg, he wasn't about to give it up. Who knew what Freakshow would do if he found out. The Bat knelt near him, rapidly pulling out supplies from his weird belt thing. Reaching for Phantoms leg made the boy jerk back violently, lowering his head slightly he moved back into place as the Bat began to wrap his leg with a cloth thing. "You'll have to be careful with this leg. I don't have anything to make a full on cast, and I doubt you'll allow me to put one of you, so you'll have to be careful" the dark knight explained as he wrapped. Phantom nodded nervously. "Anything else?" The Bat asked, and Phantom shook his head _no_. Even though _yes_ his head hurt and _yes,_ and _yes_ his arm was broken, but he wasn't about to go and show _more_ weakness. Deep down he knew that it was probably a dumb idea but he had been taught— _trained_ , not to show pain or weakness.

The Bat studied him for a moment more before nodding. "Stay out of trouble kid." And with that the Bat was gone with the wind. The darkness enveloping him in a blanket of disguise.

Phantom sighed slightly, shifting his foot in the thin, makeshift cast. Pulling his pant sleeve over it he began his journey back to the circus train.

-0-

Fun fact, Loriven was originally written for a original book about demons and stuff. And since I had an _entire fricken language_ just sitting there doing nothing, I decided to use it in here instead of the usual ceaser cyphers.

 **Question:** wildest thing you've seen in a school, or if your homeschooled, in an extracurricular activity. Personally I watched a kid slam dunk the vice principal into a trash can because he tried to get them to stop fighting.

If you want a cool story to read I'd suggest Fallen Spirit by Thenarey, it's really good and I'm definitely not suggesting it because other wise she's gonna start another new project. Send lots of love over there and tell her Dee says hi, actually maybe don't.


	12. But The Repercussions

Buterflypuss: thank you, your name has also wormed it's way into my auto complete lol.

BananaRock509: now that sounds really cool! My spirit week at school was mostly kids talking about how much they hated it, and then fighting kids who had different sport team preferences.

Phoenix-inferno18: I'm really glad that I managed to get his personality down, I'm sort of nervous about it and I've started watching the Justice League cartoon to be able to see him more and get a better idea of the older characters personalities.

reader238: shhh, _don't tell anyone but... it's in his boot._

YinYangWriter: welcome back to the Phandom, hope you don't get scared off lol. I'm glad that you enjoyed my story and I hope that the characters were accurate enough for you. Your school sounds very _interesting._ At my third school—I move/switch schools a lot, I'm not suspended or anything hush down—the entire staff dressed up as this one really iconic teacher at the school—who I personally found really intimidating cause he was _huge._ 6 feet easily and also just a generally big guy—with masks and everything. The thing about the teacher not believing the kid if he said you hit him, I find really funny. I had an LA teacher who was sort of like that.

MultiFandomLover99: thank you, the male gym teacher at my old school was sort of like that. He'd make kids side run while hugging them self's and yelling _I love my self_ at the top of their lungs. I'm glad you like my language, it physically pains—exaggeration—me to write in it so I'm glad it's not for nothing.

RangerHorseTug: _duck taping a principal..._ I've got nothing. That's pretty wild. I wasn't actually sure if this had been done before, but I hadn't read anything like it and since this category is pretty saturated with the same ehm, three same stories over and over again with the occasional orignal thing sprinkled in. _Not to throw any shade but I mean, have you seen?_ I'm also happy that the _Staff_ members aren't coming off as Mary-sues or anything. There's another character in it this chapter that's not major or anything so hopefully that's good. I'm also happy that the headcanons are good as well.

Bellmitch Kritznovah: hopefully stuff will be explained in this chapter why the bat didn't see anything, the mascot guy sounds like a very _interesting_ person. There was a kid at my school who came in with two stacks of 100$ I believe Monopoly money with his face printed on it. He called them _Michael-bucks_ and just handed them out to _everyone._ I still have have the one I got in my room lol.

 **WARNINGS: Refferences to murder, LITERAL MURDER, CHOKING, no not like that hushhh, me not knowing how to spell, lots and lots of Loriven, my tears because that grammar _hurts. ALSO SOME SWEARING THATS THERE TOO._**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 12_

 _ **But The Repercussions**_

A new cast member is introduced,

and he and Phantom have quite the relationship. 

-0-

" _Your leg is bandaged_." Lydia acknowledged through sign language, the minute he walked through the cart door. She, and a few of the other ghost—the ones he hadn't really spoken to—were just chilling in there since it was dark out and tonight's heist would be soon.

Danny shifted to his superior form, still a little fuzzy about how he'd gotten outside earlier he frowned. At least he could turn back into this form again. One of the ghost—a new one who he didn't recognize at all—flinched back before moving to stand up. Just from the way the ghost flickered in and out of visibility, fumbling slightly when he suddenly turned intangible unexpectedly. Phantom only _stared_ in pure confusion. When had they gotten a new ghost?

" _Tu_." _you_. The ghost hissed in Loriven, _very_ new ghost then, especially if he didn't yet have a hold on the English language. Most ghost relearned their original language, within a few hours of their death. Which meant that this guy died _recently, as in a few hours recently_. He continued to stalk forward and towards the frozen Phantom, who just stared with wide, wide eyes. "Tu bankel!" _You bitch!_ He yelled enraged and stormed at Phantom charging him.

"Leeva xine li dina?" _What did I do?_ Phantom asked desperately, as he dodged a violent swipe from the ghost.

The ghost stared in confusion. "You don't _remevino_?" _You don't remember?_ The ghost asked still enraged, slipping between Loriven and English. "You don't remember?" He hissed again, only becoming more and more angry.

"Hey _kenvexli_ " one of the ghost he didn't know called to the enraged one, using the general nickname for a new ghost that hadn't named itself or didn't remember it's original name yet. " _Chillax_ " the ghost smirked slightly.

"Chillax?" The kenvexli repeated. " _Chillax_?" He yelled again. "I will _not chillax!_ " His head, which had moved to face the ghost egging him on— _Tensor_ was his name, he was pretty sure—suddenly snapped back to Phantom. "Not when _he's_ just standing there!" The kenvexli made wild hand movements. He seemed to be young, now that his form was stabilizing Phantom could clearly see a greasy, mop of brown hair on the ghost head, and a blueish-green skin tone, much like someone whose ghost had drowned or had no air would look like.

"Jeez dude," Tensor continued, an air of superiority washing over him. "He didn't do nothin'"

The ghost took a deep shuddering breath, staring wide eyes with a dull, pale face. "Su n'hexro lo!" The man finally screeched and all the ghost froze.

Tensor stared with oversized eyes. "Oh my _fuck_." He whispered horrified.

Phantom gagged slightly, "I—I, I didn't. I coul—" he tried to reason. Lydia only stared at him with shocked eyes. "I couldn't have—" he continued to studded over and over again. His breathing slowly rising, Phantoms hand carefully raised his hands to his head. "I wouldn't—" he tried again, hiccuping and crying.

"Su n'hexro lo!" The ghost repeated again louder. Moving—no _stalking_ towards Phantom like a wild cat about to _attack_.

"Su n'hexro lo" the ghost hissed once more.

 _You killed me._

-0-

Alexander Demay was walking down the street later on in the day. The sun was setting in the distance banketing the city in a warm hue of orange and pink. He had to pick up the groceries for him and his roommates. They were out of milk. _Again_. Alexander couldn't help but let out a sour laugh, shaking his head slightly with a small smile on his lips. That was when he saw the _boy_. Down one of the darker alleyways there was a boy softly crying, curled up in a small ball and shaking. "Hey? Hey kid?" Alexander slowly approached the boy, holding his hands out to show he didn't have any weapons.

The kid stared up at him with large _red_ eyes. Alexander couldn't help but faulter slightly, staring into the eyes of the boy. His hair was also odd, it was bright white and dirty. "Hey kid?" He repeated. "Are you okay?" The kid only _stared_ , fat, salty tears rolling down his face as he whimpered slightly.

Alexander moved towards the boy, he was frail and thin. Looked so young and fragile like the boys bone could brake under the snap of somebody fingers. He moved deeper into the alleyway, nearing the end of it, he was now only two feet away from the boy when it happened. Someone behind him pushed him forward and towards the crying boy. Spinning around to see who had pushed him, Alexander was shocked to see _that boy_. The red eyed, white haired one. Falling onto the floor he glanced behind him to see how the boy could've moved like that—in the back of his mind he knew that it was impossible. He was staring at the boy when he had been pushed—to see the boy just staring at him. There was _two of them._

Alexander shifted to moved when one of the boys grabbed his legs and ripped him forward, having his head hit the ground. Blinking away the stars in his eyes he realized that the second boy was now on top of him, with his hands around his neck. Alexander let out a surprised gasp, hands flying up as he tried to pry the hands of the now glassy eyed boy off of his heck. Letting out desperate, hollow gasps proved to be a mistake as the boy only added more pressure. The second boy—the one not _choking him_ had stood up, staring down with cold, glassy eyes. Alexander glanced up with a pleading look on his face as he continued to trash and grasp at the hands around his neck.

"Hurry it up boy." He heard a hissing voice commanded. Glancing over revealed that it was a pale, albino man with an odd trench coat and a glowing _red_ staff. Alexander was briefly entranced by it. "The shows will be starting, and _we need a new act_."

Alexander felt the rest of the air leave his lungs as he felt the world around him slipping into darkness. _This is it_ he thought blearily, _I'm going to die_. Staring up at his murderer he committed the look of the boy to memory, before drifting away. He let out his last final breath and then fell slack.

-0-

Phantom stood up from the body, letting his duplicate re-emerge with himself. An odd feeling raised in his throat as he briefly gagged. Behind him Freakshow rolled his eyes, moving forward and heaving the body of the rather short college age boy, over his shoulder. "Come on now." Master called, climbing one of the emergency ladders with the body to get onto the roof.

Phantom slowly floated up, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. Taking in a shuddering breath he almost wanted to cry. What was this feeling? Why did he feel like this? Why did his core feel like it was being stabbed and ripped apparent in his body. Phantom felt his body glitch, a static like sound escaping his mouth as he let out a cry. Freakshow glanced back before once more rolling his eyes. "Get over your little _thing_ and then hurry it up." He called, turning and moving across the rooftops. Phantom let out another static cry, his body glitching violently again. He fell to the ground, feeling his superior form slip like sand from his hands. Phantom gagged once, twice as then fell to the ground in a boneless heap. His body jerked slightly, twitching like he had been electrocuted. His leg was most certainly broken in some form and he knew it would hurt for awhile.

He he laid there in a heap for what felt like hours before eventually falling unconscious, not being able to bring himself to move to somewhere safer. Phantom felt like his entire world had been ripped up, smashed and then went through a blender. Everything hurt. Like he was the one who had died. He could feel the ghost of hands—his hands—around his neck like _he_ was the one that had been killed tonight. Phantom gagged once more, his body forcing a transformation into his superior form, before the darkness took him.

When he awoke he couldn't remember a thing, slowly moving to drag his body into a nearby alleyway for safety—his leg appeared to be broken—he looked around, completely amnesic to what had gone down in the alley hours earlier.

-0-

Hope you enjoyed, leave a comment telling me what you think and how you feel.

Question of the day or whatever: got a scar? What's the story behind it.

The only big scar on my body that I have is on my middle finger, when I was like 3 or 4 I was playing with some my little pony dolls on an elliptical machine—an exercise bike—putting them on the rather large peddle and pushing it in a circle, one thing came to another and my finger was stuck between the peddle and the base, so I did what any reasonable 3 year old would do, and ripped it out. _Hard._ I basically almost fully ripped my middle finger off, I went into shock immediately, and was just like _oh no. Blood, I should go tell mommy._ So I kind of just went up to her and was like. _Mommy I has bleeding -from my mom telling me what I said._ So yeah my mom had to take me(3), my brother(6) and my cousin(3 or 2) to a hospital. And I've got this huge scar on my hand because of it.


	13. Weren’t Greater Then The Price

Multifandomlover99: ghost are generally very, _emotional_ creatures. They tend to hold grudges and remember things for a very long time, they can also be very understanding and caring. It all depends on certain _circumstances._ As for your foot, omghowwhattheheck. That sounds so painful! No thanks. 

Buterflypuss: I'm glad you enjoy it my good chap. 

RangerHorseTug: I feel so cruel writing this you have no idea. 

Bananarock509: ouch is right. Though I have a feeling Danny's feeling a little more pain then I am lol. 

Emu thing: I'm glad you enjoy it! I hope that you also continue to enjoy it. 

AlecGateway: I'm happy your enjoying it so far. I do plan on finishing it so don't worry too much. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: Yeah Tensor is new, so Is another character in this chapter but they don't show up much so don't worry. Also that story is horrifying. I'd be so afraid if the kid I was watching was about to be crushed by a bookshelf. Same thing happened to my brother but he was the one being crushed. He's fine though. 

**CHAPTER NOTES:** coming up with ghost names is haaaaarrrddd. So if you've got any suggestions, please! Lemme know. Tensor is a mixture of the word _tense—he was tense—_ and _taser_ — _he was killed by a taser._ So like. Please! As long as it isn't a human name it stands. **ALSO!** I'd like to thank you all because we have over 100 follows! And! Almost 100 reviews! You have no idea how happy this makes me feel. Thank you so much for enjoying my story. **ALSO 2.** For whatever reason fnf doesn't want to let me uncenter these so until I can get it to fix, we'll be stuck. Sorry. Now onto the chapter. 

**WARNINGS: brief fight at the begining. Nothing much I don't think.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 13_

 ** _Weren't Greater Then The Price_**

In which retribution is promised,

and a bat gets suspicious. 

-0-

The ghost tackled Phantom to the ground, the two rolling along the train cart floor as they tried to fight each other. Letting out a yell, pushing with all his strength to get the other ghost off of him. A swift kick to the kenvexli's stomach sent the ghost flying across the train cart. He coughed once or twice before Tensor and Lydia held him down. Stopping him from moving. The ghost jerked slightly trying to break loose from their holds. Hissing and growling.

Big was behind Phantom. Holding on to the boy, and making sure he couldn't snake his way out—Phantom was famously well known for his ability to just disappear from people's grasps—or turn intangible. Phantom only glared at the kenvexli, letting out the occasional warning growl or hiss.

That was when Freakshow walked it. Staring in mock surprise at the ring of ghost. Two staring at each other growling and hissing, along with a few other ghost holding the two angry ones back. He threw his head back and barked out a laugh, Phantom and the kenvexli both ducked their heads, turning to lowly growl at their Master. "You ghost are just like _animals_!" Freakshow laughed, prancing his way into the circle, his heels _click click clicking_ on the metal of the train cart. "Going rabid for _no reason!"_ The kenvexli snapped at Freakshow, lunging forward slightly, the two ghost holding him momentarily were surprised and let him slip, before the changed their grip and pulled him back.

All the ghost expressions suddenly turned from excited—for action, a fight, drama—or weariness—need to stop anyone from getting hurt, hold back the ghost—to fear and protectiveness. The ghost shifted, Tensor moving to stand in front of the kenvexli, Lydia—the traitorous fool—only moved to stand— _float_ —next to Freakshow like she had done no wrong, and was not a part of what just happened. "I never _did_ get to introduce you to the cast did I _kenvi_?" Freakshow questioned with a dark grin, using his own little version of kenvexli to refer to the new ghost.

"Line!" Freakshow ordered, and whether the ghost wanted to or not they all lined up. " _These_ are our _staff members_."

" _Shiek_ " a semi-punk looking girl with green skin and black hair, she wore dark makeup that made her eye look robotic she seemed wary, her fist curling and uncurling in her tensed position.

" _Big_ " a muscularity man with green skin as well and a messy black hair style. His build was large even without all the muscle that covered his body, Bigs eyes kept flicking from Phantom to the staff and back again.

" _Tensor_ " a dark blue skinned ghost with staticky black hair, he recognized him as one of the ghost that had held him back, and egged him onq.

" _Finks_ " a small ghost with long back hair trailing down his neck and poison, green skin.

" _Phantom_ " a pale boy with wispy white hair that seems to flow in every direction, he looked ill, his figure unnaturally thin. His eyes not quite meeting the kenvexli as he shook slightly.

" _Previce_ " a lanky Hispanic girl with a girl tint to her skin and a long dark braid. She looked like she could beat him up with her pinky finger, from what he could tell she wasn't around very much, so that was a plus.

"And the others" he wildly gestured to the other ghost in the cart. "They're simply extras." Freakshow dismissed with a flick of his hands. "But _you_ Mr. Alexander" the kenvexli flinched at the human name that sounded all too familiar. " _You_ ," he repeated, "will be one of my _main_ acts. _Welcome to the staff Alexander_." Freakshow grinned, sweeping a smooth hand over the other Staff members like he was presenting them. Maybe he was. The kenvexli couldn't help but suppress a shudder, as the ringmaster pranced around in elongated, exaggerated, smooth movements. Before he could realize what was happening, Freakshow was next to him, the red orb of his staff glowing in his peripheral. He could feel its _tug_. Like an addictive drug trying to pull him in.

He stayed silent for a minute before glassy green eyes turned red. " _Retribution_." The kenvexli corrected. "My name is _Retribution_."

-0-

Batman stared at the little, blinking, red dot on his tracker. He was crouched up on top of the roof of some convenience store, he didn't know. There really was no point in checking. The tracker was behaving oddly, it kept going _offline_. Like it had been destroyed, before blinking back into view only a few minutes later. The frail child he had helped, like he had expected, had gone to the circus.

Batman was more than a little suspicious. That was why he had come all the way to Happy Harbour to investigate. The night before, there had been a murder, or kidnapping of some sort. A local college student had gone out to get some food— _milk was mention by his roommates during the police investigation_ —for he and his roommates. Security cam footage shows the boy seeing something down an alleyway, heading towards it and then never coming back out. After about 10 minutes of silence form the boy the footage started to go fuzzy and static like someone was messing with it.

His tracker blinked out of view once more. Something it had been doing since he activated it. An old theory he had dismissed was slowly gaining more and more evidence. It was possible, that the frail nervous boy he had helped and my mysterious _Phantom of the Circus_ were one and the same. The boy usually wore a mask so getting a picture was hard, but Batman had his ways and eventually found an old online picture of a younger seeming Phantom without a mask at one of the shows. Putting the face through facial recognition was harder since the cameraman was flicking the camera around wildly trying to get the entire show on tape. Once he had found a sufficient picture of Phantoms face, he compared it the boys using facial recognition software. 96% they could've been twins. He assumed it would've been a higher number if the photos weren't so low quality, but unless they were twins he was pretty sure that the were one and the same.

It was rather troubling, he had, from what he had seen of the boy, could see signs of abuse. Fist shaped dark, blossoming, purple bruises along his arms, a dark barely visible mark on his eye, and the kids leg which had vegue bite marks. Over all, his body also showed the signs of struggle, both like he was the one attacking, and the one being attacked. Batman signed, shaking his head. This was all too complicated. Leaping off of the rooftop he was on, Batman momentarily glided down towards the train cart. Landing silently he listened.

" _Retribution_ " a voice stated rather darkly. "My name is _Retribution_ " the newly name Retribution introduced.

Batman's eyes narrowed.

-0-

 **Today's question:** what is the dumbest thing that you believed as a kid.

I personally used to think that radio stations had all their music live streamed, and that the artist would spend days in these little cubes just playing music over and over again. I'm.. not sure why...

Anywho! Comments make me a generally happier person, so don't be afraid to leave a review even if it's just venting about how Edgy(TM) the characters in this are, or spamming that I should update more(???). I hope you enjoyed, big stuff is coming I promise! Make sure to eat something today, and have a good one!


	14. And So, He Fell

MultiFandomLover99: omg when I was younger I also thought that my stuffed animals would get mad if I didn't have them all in my bed. It became quite the problem since I have _a lot_ of plushies. 

Buterflypuss: thank you good chap

Davidscrazy234: ahh, I think your confused. I meant names for random ghost, not Phantom I'm planning on keeping his name the same. 

Guest: yeah it's pretty useless to try to stop a fight. 

(Guest) Catnip:(Im not sure if I already replied to this but fnf is being weird) sounds a lot like the school that my dad went to. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: the team was just investigating again. Batman is really hard to write so like. I'm glad your enjoying it. Lastly, I could totally see thinking origami was a illness. 

YouCanOnlyPretend: fly username, see that I get. Cause like sometimes with animals it's like that. I thought that bunny's were female and rabbits wee male. 

RangerHorseTug: yeah I want Retribution to play a roll in pulling Danny out of the control. I'm gonna have them have this big emotional talk, and all that. Retribution was well, _revenge_ for his murder. His obsessed with solving his own murder, bringing himself to justice, and by extension, others unsolved murders. When he was alive he didn't go into forensic science for nothing. Danny's obsession is pretty much protection. So he gets ill if going against it. The murder wasn't nearly as bad as it could've been because his core reasoned that it was to _protect_ his master. Kenvexli is a made up word from the ghost language and it basically means _new born ghost,_ or _ghost without a name._ There's not really an English equivalent. 

Britt299919: I try to upload daily sooo, Batman is really hard to write as I've mentioned before so I'm happy I'm doing a fine job of it. I'm also glad that your happy with my additions to the _staff._

 **I ahm... don't have any excuse for why this didn't go up yesterday. I was tired even though everything was written. Sorry. Also I'm probably gonna explain a bit of how the staff works and why Retribution didn't seem to be affected at first in the next AN chapter cause this one is so _long_. **

**WARNINGS: CHARACTERS SEEM OCC? Nope. I've got a plan, there's a reason. Martian and ghost powers are quite similar don't you think? In many ways they are quite similar. Batman occ? Probably. He's hard to write. Everything still centred? Don't know why. It's ruining my aesthetic and I wanna cry.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 14_

 _ **And So, He Fell**_

In which deep rooted poison spreads,

and a member is abandoned. 

Conner let out a yell as he charged Black Canary, who used his slightly outstretched hand to grab, and then flip him on to his back. Letting out a grunt of frustration Conner glared for a moment at the woman standing above him, before finally taking the outstretched hand she was offering. "You did well, better than before." She praised, Conners only reply was rolling his eyes and walking away.

Black Canary only sighed, watching the retreating form of Conner as he stormed off.

-0-

" _And_ ," Robin stretched out the word, as his fingers few across the screen at rapid paces. " _Almost_ " he continued, still stretching out the words. "There!" Robin cheered, fist pumping briefly as files began to rapidly open and load onto the halo-screen.

"Alright man. Time to finally learn something!" Kid Flash—who was stood behind Robin—smirked, his eyes scanning the screen. They hadn't gotten much info, other then of course what they had found out about the circus, and usually missions weren't so _secretive_. It was _weird_. Even though all the team members present—Megan, Robin, Kid Flash And Aqualad—knew that it was probably for a reason, they couldn't help it.

"Your oddly good at that." Megan commented moving forward to read one of the pre-opened files. Robins eyes briefly flicked over to hers, smiling he shot her a _Thanks_ before moving to click on one certain file. It expanded, filling up the screen in all its blue glory. There were two pictures, that was the first thing the team noticed, one of a black hair, blue eyed boy—one that looked suspiciously like the boy Robin had met a while back—and one of a white haired, red eyed boy—they didn't quite recognize him, but something in the back of their minds told them that they should—the two pictures, on closer examination appeared to be almost the same boy. It was like they were _twins_.

Scrolling down revealed writing. _Lots of writing_. Robin quickly read through the writing, his eyes flicking from word to word. "So," he summed up. "Bats thinks that these two" he pointed to the two boys. "Are the same person?" Megan blinked staring at the photos with a hard expression.

"That doesn't make any sense." She said suddenly, moving forward and brushing past Robin, who looked at her in slight surprise. "See look." She pointed to the two images. "His face." Megan pointed out, staring forward as her other team members blinked in slight confusion. Aqualad and Robin both shared a glance, their eyes meeting before flicking back to the screen. "They're different."

"I _guess_." Kid Flash said slowly. Moving forward carefully. "If you look, his eyes—not the colour—are kind of different shaped." Kid Flash blinked surprised as Conner suddenly rushed forward and shut off the computer.

"Someone's coming. _Shhh_." He hushed, glaring in the direction of the door to the room they were currently in. It was then that Black Canary walked in, noticing the way both Megan and Conner seemed to be just glaring holes into her body. She stared at them for a few minutes before walking off to do something.

 ** _We should talk like this._** Megan announced suddenly, drawing the teams attention to her. _**It's safer.**_ They nodded slightly unsure before continuing their discussion.

 ** _They look different._** Megan insisted. _**See! Look there.**_ She pointed out once more to the now much smaller picture being projected up from a watch on Robins arm.

 ** _Sorta._** Robin agreed somewhat hesitantly.

-0-

" _Repercussion_ Batman heard a voice echo as he crept forward. "What a name!" That was followed by manic laughter, which went on for a few seconds before suddenly stopping. Batman tensed staring down at the now visible man. He was pale, albino, with a long black trench coat with random assortments of small chains and skulls hanging from it, giving the man an overall punk look. "Now run along! Rest up! Do what you must!" The man called with a flick and _swish_ of his hand, before walking off and out of view.

Batman watched as the lined up people—he had noted them when he first saw them, but chose to not pay them too much mind since they were just standing—suddenly slouched, or lifted off the ground somehow. Repercussion suddenly moved, swiftly stalking to one of the younger ones. A white haired boy. _The Phantom Of The Circus,_ Batman recognized. All of the other staff members seemed wary of the new one. Moving here and there avoiding his gaze when it suddenly snapped to them. The two ghost—Repercussion and Phantom—began to heatedly speak in a language Batman could not understand. There aggressiveness only growing more and more until one of the others, a girl with black hair and dark makeup suddenly yelled something in the same language, which caused them both to back down. Phantom retreating behind the woman that had yelled, and Retribution storming off to the end of the cart.

The easiest way to find out what was going on was to find someone, and interrogate them. If they didn't crack get John or Megan—as she was really rather powerful—to read the mind of whoever they were trying to get to talk, and then they'd know everything. The only problem was the fact that he couldn't really swoop into the train cart and just steel one of their people. Well, technically he _could_ , and they were under _suspicion_ , but he'd rather avoid anything illegal.

-0-

Batman leaped across the rooftops chasing after the group of _floating_ , hooded people who had just broken into a nearby bank. The leader, or what he assumed was the leader yelled something he couldn't hear, as the two others with him sped up. Leader—as Batman had dubbed what appeared to be the head of the group—had two bags of cash in each of his hands—four bags in total—the two people behind Leader each had two bags held in one hand, and one hand free. Batman suddenly ran forward, jumping into the air and tackling the leader to the ground. The leader—who looked as if he was no older thirteen—let out a surprised screech as the rolled on the ground. Letting out another roar the boy scratched at the bat, money bags thrown half-hazardously to the side.

When the boy suddenly let out a yell of frustration, followed by a string of words Batman could only assume were swears, he glanced up. The two others who were with the boy had flown off and away. Turning back to the boy Batman realized he was running down the alleyway. _What the?_ Batman briefly wondered, before chasing after the boy. Tackling him to the ground after a rather short chase, the mask the boy was wearing cracked. Spitting in half, revealing one shining, dull, red eye. Batman swiftly snapped an inhibitor collar around the boys neck. Watching as the boys eyes were suddenly blown wide, his hands jerking under the pressure of Batman's, who was holding him down. Spinning the boy around he handcuffed him with general power inhibitor handcuffs, only being able to hope that they would work. The boy continued to struggle, even as Batman led him towards the batcar, which was parked nearby.

"Let go of me!" The boy yelled, his thrashing only becoming more and more violent. "You" a grunt "cant" a jerk "do" a snap of teeth "this!" He continued. Batman stayed silent as the boy began to panic more and more. "I have to go!" He shouted suddenly. "No you don't understand! I have t—I can't! Lemme—" he continued to jerk and twist painfully. Batman sighed before sinking a light sedative into his arm. That shut the boy up—for only a minute. "What did you put in me?" The boy turned around with wide scared eyes. "No! Seriously! What did you—" he could feel his legs growing week. "Oh my god" he whispered, eyes flicking from Batman to his arm. "Oh my god." Phantom repeated.

The darkness closed in, Phantom began to cry.

-0-

poor danno 

**Question of the day or whatever:** what is the dumbest thing you did while board. 

Once I was on a air plane and it was a 8 hour flight so they gave us meals, and in those meals were salt and pepper packets. _Tasty salt and Tasty pepper._ So me being the board teenager that I was and am, poored all the salt and pepper into a cup of water with only a few drops in it. Then I drank it. It was... well. It was disgusting. I only took a sip thank god but man. That was a mistake. I spend the rest of the flight trying to convince my friends—there was about 40 of us on the flight—to drink it. Only one kid did. He agreed that it was a mistake. I've never seen an airstaff member look so concerned. 


	15. Drifting Through A Red Wake

Hhhhhh we got 100 reviews. This makes me feel considerably less depressed!! Yay. Amh okay so. Thanks for reading and not rioting.

Buterflypuss: thank you good chap

reader238: I was laughing at what you said and my brother wanted to know what was so funny... it did not end well.

RangerHorseTug: I checked my chapter and yEAH I TOTALLY DID MESS UP HIS NAME THANKS. As for the spelling things, I'm not even surprised. My schedule is literally write, then the next day edit in the _italics_ and then post the same day. I was unaware that bored and board, were spelt differently. I wish I could say that English isn't my fist langauge as an excuse, but it is. And I have nothing.

YouCanOnlyPretend: but _wwwhhhyyy?? Would you do that to yourself??_

Bellmitch Kritznovah: he didn't _kidnap_ him per say, just _borrowed Danny for a little bit._ As for canon, it's up to circus freaks, and if that episode with the ice happens after Circus Fresks then... that's canon too. I love me some ice powers. Also that story sounds adorable. Fantastic.

Britt299919: pfft omg. Danny's freeing process is gonna take awhile sooooo... also how do you tell the _colour_ of a package based on the _taste_ of the sweetener.

Kg.gutierrez76: all the chapters have to be atleast 1000 words before I post them, so idk. As for the pm, I don't really like the system they have. _I also barely know how to use it and feel really awkward using it_ so I only tend towards it when it's a serious matter, or something I need to talk about immediately. If you don't want to read the notes, that's why I have the beginning bit with the story name, chapter name, a little _what happens_ type thing and all that.

SonicMax: _maaayyybbbeee_

Detectivemaps: ahh sorry for the long wait!! Here you go.

 **WARNINGS: god tier google translate Spanish, SWEARING, references to death. Help me this app _sucks so much why is it so glitchy I wanna cry. I wrote this at 2am gimme a break. BAD SPELLING PROBABLY._**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 15_

 ** _Drifting Through A Red Wake_**

In which a ghost has no people skills,

and someone is _borrowed_ off the streets. 

Phantom awoke to a _ringing, droning, humming_ , sound in his head. He let out a low groan, his entire body was sore and he didn't want to move. Has he slept weird? Moving to rub his head his was surprised when his hand wouldn't move. Opening his eyes a crack he stared at his hands in confusion. They were chained down, why? That was when the events of the previous day hit him.

Jerking on his arms experimentally he stared at his hands. There were a pair of handcuffs chaining him to the table, the chain was only around 7 links, a couple inches in total. Frowning in concentration he moved to turn intangible, only to have it not work. Phantom stared intently at the cuffs as he continued to try. Nothing happened.

Growling in frustration he glanced down at his feet. Also chained down. Geez, these people sure did like their chains. He was sat in a plain gray chair, the walls and floor were made of cement. There was a door in one of the far corners, and on the wall next to the door was a mirror. Phantom knew instantly that it was a one-way mirror. _Great_. Interrogation time. _Fantastic_. There was also a desk with another chair on the opposite side.

Batman walked in, nodding in greeting. Phantom _glared_. "You can't do this." He insisted. "You can't just—just keep me here!" Batman's eyes narrowed. "I have to get back!" The boy continued almost hysterically. "I—you don't understand!" Pulling at the chains Phantom tried to rip his arms out of them.

"You'll hurt yourself if you try that anymore." Batman finally spoke. Moving to pull out the chair and sit down he simply stared at the boy across the desk. "Are you affiliated with Circus Gothica in anyway, shape, or form?" He asked beginning the interrogation.

Phantoms eyes—which had been staring at his feet—suddenly snapped up to meet Batman's, they were wide and alert. _How much did he know?_ Phantom stayed silent for a moment, trying to figure out how to answer, the staff hadn't coded him on how to respond to these types of questions and since he was so far away, he could barely feel it's touch. It was more of a lingering feeling, like it had been there but wasn't anymore. A glance in the mirror revealed green eyes. Phantom blinked, even more startled, before he panicked. There was no one to guide him. He didn't know what to say, what to do. All of his existence was spent following orders, and now there was nothing to follow. "Yes" Phantom shakily replied. He needed to get out of here. Where was the red mist?

"Are you affiliated with the recent crimes, such as robbery?" This was a _test_ Phantom rewalized. A test to see if he would tell the truth.

"No."

-0-

It was intoxicating, smothering and crushing in the best ways. She couldn't breath, but she could, she couldn't see, but she could, she couldn't understand, but she knew everything. Megan had come across the feeling when they first visited Circus Gothica it was like a soothing soft blanket had been lifted around her. The feeling had only gotten stronger and stronger and now, she had become acquainted with the red mist. It was so incredibly easy to just sit back and let it control her.

The team had come so _close_ to discovering the over from of the red mist best member. She _had_ to stop it. The easiest way would be to open up a mind link. Let them feel the red mist, let the fog persuade them into seeing differences that clearly were not there.

Breathing in she sat in the kitchen area perfectly content. "Megan?" She could hear a voice ask.

"Yes?" She heard her own voice reply, sit back and relax, she didn't have to do a thing.

"Are you oka—woah." Megan heard the voice sudden state. Blinking away from the fog she stared at the person talking to her. It was Conner. "Are—are your eyes okay? They're _red_." He commented.

Megan smiled wistfully. _Red_. "Yeah. It's just something I'm trying." She replied peacefully. Conner looked almost, _doubtful_ at her claim. "Really." Megan laughed. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it. Now come on. You wanna help me cook?"

-0-

"Where is _he?"_ Freakshow shouted pounding down a fist onto a nearby box. "You just _left him there with the bat?"_ He nearly screeched, causing the nearby ghost to flinch back. "Who _knows_ where he could be by now!" Freakshow let out another roar of anger before turning with a _swish_ of his coat and storming away. He had a minion to look for.

Retribution glanced at the others in the room. "Is—is he always like that?" The new ghost asked worried.

Previce shrugged, making a show of sharpening on of her nails on a golden coin. "Like I care. Guys got more violent mood swings then the small one." She paused looking thoughtful "well I guess, _you're_ the small one now." Previce laughed, pointing a long, _sharp_ finger at Retribution who blinked in confusion.

"How am _I_ the small one? I'm twenty?" He defended. "And who even is _the small one?_ Phantom? Cause he's like thirteen or something."

"You _were_ twenty." Sheik corrected with a roll of her eyes. "Somebody needs to explain this to you. Basically when you die your age is reset. Phantom is two or something—he's ah, not really sure—because he's been a ghost for that long. I, personally am forty, but I died when I was a teenager."

"So I'm, like. Two days old?" Retribution growled. "What the hell?" He crossed his arms angrily. Dull, dusty, brown hair flying wildly around his head. His now red— _red_ —eyes flared as a warning. "This is so dumb."

"You _sound_ like a two year old!" Previce pointed out, continuing to stare at her fingernails. " _Whining_."

"Wouldn't you know?" Retribution shouted. "Did you leave a two year old behind when you died? Or is there another reason why your so _damn_ salty?" The second the words left his mouth he knew he had taken it too far.

Previce let out a shriek. "How _dare you! Vete a la mierda"_ when she made a move to stand up from the box she was sitting on Finks and Big were instantly there trying to calm her down.

Retribution stared for a couple minutes before stalking off. If all he did was make them mad then so be it. "Alexan—" He heard a voice behind him speak rather softly—Sheik.

"Don't call me _that_." He hissed out angrily. "I get it okay! I suck at people skills! I don't need you going after me like your all high and mighty." Shooting an angry glance over his shoulder he glared.

"You shouldn't have said that. You need to come to terms with it." Sheik moved forward, not at all deterred by the angry demeanor of the other ghost.

"Your _not my older sister!_ So stop acting like it."

"I'm not trying to ac—"

"Then _shut up!"_

The sound of a slow clap echoed throughout the silent as Freakshow along with Lydia phased through the cart wall. He tipped a foot down, spike heels making a _click click clicking_ on the metal floor as he moved forward strutting awkwardly. "My, my, my. Your being _so noisy_." Freak spoke with a grand, pompous voice as he strode his way into the center. "And I _just left!_ You just _love_ bickering don't you all? _Like an old couple."_ He let out a laugh, snapping his fingers a few times. "You woke me up." Freakshow stated dangerously, narrowed eyes flickering with anger. "And I care about you _all so much, but"_ he spoke in a sing-song voice. "I can't do that, when your all making so _much **noise**." _

" _So_ ,"

" ** _Silence_**."

-0-

Retribution has... very bad people skills.

 **Question of the day:** okay, not really a story buuuut, I wanna know what _you_ would like to see. Also I'm running out of general story questions so if you've got one, _send it my way please I'm dying over here._ **Also!!!** Interrogation questions? I need some because I really suck at it so please!!

A lot of people have been talking about how stuff is finally starting to pick up and I'm just sitting here like. _Fools._ If I may direct you to the diagram thing from chapter 8(?) were at the middle/ending of Circus boy, meaning that this is only the first act of the first part.

3 main parts

Blink And It's Gone (like a season 1)

•Circus Boy **~~ you are here.**

•Best Of Worst Worlds

•Happy Tears

Stuttering Heart (like a season 2)

•Being Human, Taught By Two Aliens

•Not The Only One

•Work Above All Else

Define Family (like a season 3)

•Looks Like Someone I Used To Know

•Remembering What He Didn't Want To

•Conflicting Beliefs


	16. Failing To Swim

RangerHorseTug: were... were you in an airplane while writing that? Lol 

YouCanOnlyPretend: honestly, tea. 

Reader238: yeah, like it's been mensioned before, Danny's addicted basically. He feels like he can't live—hA—without the control of the staff. 

Alchemyfreak42: _shrug._ Alllsoooo grammar!! I know my Your you're stuff... but none of this is beta'd, it's written on an iPhone, and honestly I suck at spelling anyway. So rip. Thanks for the tips though lol. 

Rosie Dragoneel: thank you!!!

Death Update: your username is my mood. And don't worry mama bear sheiks gonna stay. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: Okay I'm _assuming_ youre talking about the soul thing. With superboy's soul looking way younger than it should? Yeah it's like that, as for Megan I remember an episode where it was said that in Mars years she was old enough to be an adult on Earth, but if you translated the years she was only like 14. If that makes sense. Idk. And finally I've been feeling somewhat less depressed so like. That's a plus. Thanks for asking. 

Thanks for all the comments friends! They make me considerately less depressed. 

**Momentum**

 _Chapter 16_

 ** _Failing To Swim_**

In which a ghost answers some 

questions and ends up crawling back 

-0-

"How old are you."

Phantom silently cursed, out of _all_ the questions he could've been asked. He didn't honestly really know. " _Uhm_ ," the boy stalled, eyes flicking around the room as if it would answer the question for him. "Fifteen" Phantom finally found himself blurting out. That _should be right._ Maybe he should thank Big for the math lessons. The Bat nodded, briefly and Phantom held his breath nervously.

"Where were you three days ago?" Batman pressed, starting with the easy questions.

"I don'know" He couldn't help but reply, with a casual roll of his eyes. Feigning confidence seemed to be something he did a lot. Especially when he was farther away from the staff, and since he couldn't even feel it anymore, other than a distant remaining touch, an echo of red and crimson, he was especially sarcastic.

This only seemed to make the Bat angrier. He stared with a hard glare, and Phantom couldn't help but feel like he was staring into his very being. Like he was under trial, and that this was his death day—ignoring the fact that he was already dead—Phantom cracked, looking away as to avoid the famous _Bat-glare_. "An easier question then, What's your name." Another voice spoke, causing Phantom to suddenly snap his head up. _Wonderwoman_ stood in all of her—slightly terrifying—glory.

Freakshow had taught them about each of the Justice League members just in case they ran into one of them. It turned out to be surprisingly useful. Wonderwoman; has a human, secret identity, not sure what it is. Has a _lasso of truth_ that allows her to force the truth out of anyone. _Do not get caught_. She made him responsibly nervous. "Phantom." He replied using his stage name, she never specified after all.

Wonderwoman raised a silent eyebrow, her position shifting to lean on her left leg. "Your _real name_." She clarified before Batman had the chance to, seeing as things could get bad if he did. "Not your _stage name."_

Phantom grumbled something under his breath. He _didn't know_ his _real name_ or whatever the lady was asking for. A memory flashed through his head.

-0-

A dark haired girl with purple, _purple_ , eyes smiled at him. "So Danny," she begun causally. "Up for a fly around the town?" He grinned at the girl nodding before lifting into the air and grabbing hold of the girl. Zooming into the air he flew over a town he could no longer recognize or navigate. Smiling and laughing talking with the girl as the few. _Who was she._

-0-

"Danny." He answered blinking his eyes slightly. Phantom chose to ignore the shared look the two had. Like a silent eye _conversation_. He wished he had someone to have cool silent eye conversations with. That would be _cool_.

"Last name?" Batman questioned gruffly. Phantom silently shook his head before grinning _Nun-ya_ , which only landed him with another bat-glare. "Fine. What is your role in _Circus Gothica?"_

This one was easy. This one was very easy indeed. "I do the trapeze, y'know. Flips and all that jazz." Phantom answered with a proud smirk. He was the best of the best, mostly because he could _literally_ fly through the air.

"Do you know this boy." The Batman slid a piece of paper with a photo and information on it. There was a smiling boy with ashy brown hair and bright green eyes, he wore a grey T-shirt with some random symbol on. Next to him was a dirty blond hair girl covered in flour with a playful pout on her face. Her eyes were shut closed, so he couldn't see what colour they were. Phantom opened and closed his mouth a few times dumbly. "You do." The Bat answered for him. Phantom stayed silent with a pale face. "This is Alexander Demay, and three days ago, he went missing. Then he was found dead." Batman gripped the table almost _painfully_.

Wonderwoman sighed before putting a hand on his shoulder. "I've got this." She murmured quietly, pulling up Batman and sitting down. Batman glared momentarily before sighing and walking out of the room. With Bruce gone she leaned forward onto the table. "We have reason to believe you may have something to do with it. We are not saying that it's your fault, we just want to get things cleared up alright." Phantom nodded feeling rather light headed.

"Your eyes are green." She acknowledged, and Phantom nodded absentmindedly. "They were red." He shrugged as a sign of _I don't really know_. Mostly because he didn't. Wonderwoman sighed.

-0-

Phantom mentally grinned. These cuffs stopped him from phasing or turning invisible but they didn't stop him from _duplicating_. Duplication was always a strange sensation. Like having double vision, it wasn't always a fun experience. The duplicate was formed out of the cuffs, allowing him to turn invisible the minute the other was formed. Speeding towards Wonderwoman he turning intangible and possessed her. It _also_ felt weird. Staring at himself, all cuffed and chained and _green eyed._ Standing up he made an energy transfer. Now the one possessing Wonderwoman was the original and the cuffed was but a duplicate. Easy escape.

Walking out of the room he glanced around the area. Briefly looking into the ladies memories to tell the way out. A teleporter. _Cool_. That was when a voice stopped him. "Diana?" Wonderwomans secret identities name was _Diana?_ He'd have to tell his master this. Turning around she was faced with Batman. _Crap_.

"I've got to go." Phantom answered trying his best to intimidate Wonderwomans voice. With that he turned and spun around, walking down the hallway. He was in space. _Cool_. Staring at the windows dreamily as images and impressions passed through his mind. He used the teleportation thing to bring him down to Earth, leaving Wonderwomans body the minute he was off the street and into an alleyway.

Glancing around he reconized the area as Gotham. Great. Turning invisible he absorbed the clone, blinking his eyes at the vertigo feeling he got. Double memories. Not fun. Hovering for a few minutes to gain his baring he soon took off and into the clouds. By the time he was halfway there it was nightfall. Today was Monday. _Yay_. He didn't actually have anything against Monday. It just seemed to be a universally hated day. By the time he could feel the familiar red _tug_ , he was exhausted. Letting himself drift to it.

"Phantom?" He heard a voice ask. " _Where_ _were you?_ " The voice questioned harshly, feeling a hand grab at his face he felt himself fall deeper into the redness, losing focus on what was happening. It was then that he was hit, hard with something red. It pulled and dragged at his mind. Tearing it and drowning him, forcing him into focus. Phantom could feel hot tears falling down his face as he tried to pull away. "Now," the voice he now identified as Freakshow grinned dangerously, staring off and into the darkness around. "You know what we must do."

He could feel the mist as it surround him. Drowning him on land. Letting out a choked cry he thrashed wildly trying to force the redness out. It was too strong. Surrounding his body and tearing at his mind. It was then that he felt it. Something—the mist he vaguely recognized—grabbed his core and _pulled_. Phantom let out an unholy screech. Crying and coughing as he tried to twist out of the way.

 _Killed him, destroyed him, ended his life and liked it, killed her, loved it so much. She's dead, took her life and loved it._ The mist screamed into his mind. He opened his eyes wide, swimming, swirling, drowning pools of green and red and it _hurt_.

 _Crushing crushing crushing_ his core was being crushed and he wanted out he needed out. Continuing to cough he weakly struggled, staring up with wide, glossy, eyes, he silently pled for end. Freakshow only stared, not letting up. The sound of walking alerted Phantom to Freakshow moving towards him. He grabbed him, from the front of his cloak and lifted Phantom into the air. he felt his from glitch and melt from the strain. Before he could understand what was happening he was soaring across the cart and hitting the edge of the wall. Phantom groaned. Freakshows heels _click click clicked_ towards him, leering and looming over his body. "You came back." He stated with mild surprise evident in his voice. Crouching down to Phantoms level. "I care about you _so much, but_ when you need to learn, you need to learn. Now tell me,"

 _"Where were you?"_

-0-

The minute Diana stiffly walked out of the interrogation room Bruce knew something was wrong. The way she walked was the first thing, then the way she talked. It was odd and forced seeming. Bruce's eyes narrowed, pausing a moment before turning to follow her.

She was already gone.

Swiftly he turned to the interrogation room, throwing open the door revealed a rather smug looking Phantom. " _Batsy_!" The boy almost _whined_ , "don't you know to never turn your back on an enemy?" Batman stormed forward, words already forming on his lips before he was interrupted. "No? Well sorry." the boy _almost_ sounded sincere. " _Goodbye_." And with that the boy dissipated into the air. Gone with the wind.

Batman rushed forward growling angrily. " _That sneaky little—"_

-0-

"Bruce?" Dick asked, walking into the living area to see him sitting on the couch watching something on the TV. When Bruce nodded he continued. "I think somethings wrong with Megan."

"Like what?" Bruce sat up, turning slightly to motion Dick over.

"Phantom. She—we—" Looking away, he tried to figure out how to say what he wanted to. _"We hacked your files."_ Dick finally spoke all at once quickly. "We—uh, _I_ hacked your files and found one on Phantom, and the black haired kid. You uhm, said something about them being the same person, and then Megan started getting all defensive. It was weird, and before I know it we're all agreeing with here. Like—like a freaky _mind control."_

Bruce glanced up at him, the sound of thunder rolling in the distance as they both stared at each other. He sucked in a breath, leaning back in a way that made him look far older than he actually was. "I," he spoke carefully only after a moment, the news station bickering about the mystery robberies in the background. "I have a theory."

"This," he brought up a picture on his phone, a red sceptre decorated with bat wings and rubies. "Is the _Eye Of Entrancement._ It's rumoured to control ghost." Bruce revealed, seeing Dick about to interrupt he continued, "now the sources could be brought into question but, I do have reason to believe it."

"What about Megan then?" Dick couldn't help but ask, glancing at the window as lightning suddenly exploded the outside darkness into light.

"An unexpected side effect. I doubt the sceptre was made to control Martians, it's just a side effect. Like how a car isn't made to pollute the air, it's an unexpected side effect. I doubt that the ringmaster, Freakshow, is even aware he has control over Megan."

"Then how—"

"From what I can tell, the _Eye_ links the mind of its holder, and those it holds to each other. So even the mental wants and needs will be fulfilled without having to actually command, meaning that this Freakshow man, doesn't want us knowing who Phantom is. I've tried searching him up, but other than the circus, I've got absolutely nothing. It's almost like he didn't exist before this. The most I currently have is a small forum asking if anyone remembered a small town hero named Phantom."

"Who made the post?"

"A Metropolis blogger named, _Star Stoneridge_."

-0-

Yeah uhm. The blogger. Star Stoneridge, I thought we could use some more canon characters so I'm beinging Star from DP and Paulina(more of a minor character but you'll see) also from DP into this. I didn't know what her last name was and couldn't find it so yeah... aliteration is a theme in DC universe so that's why it's like that. Also Stoneridge is a wonderful lastname. 

**WARNINGS FOR NEXT CHAPTER CAUSE I DONT WANNA HERE ABOUT IT.**

There's gonna be a homosexual relationship in the next chapter. I don't care if you don't like it, if you're not okay with that kind of stuff then leave. I don't want no comments about how it's gross or whatever.


	17. Breathing In A Haze

_Pained coughs,_ I actually got a maybe hate comment!! I'm so excited I feel like a real author!! For whatever reason the comment doesn't show up, which is a shame, I'm assuming it's a glitch with it being a guest comment, but I still got the email. Here's that comment for you all, because I wanna explain this stuff you this clueless guest. 

From: Guest --:about your warning: that is the thing you need to put up in the first chapter, not 16 chapters in at the bottom. and please do not screw around with the orientation of established characters, it breaks things and is annoying.

First of all, those little chapter chart things I've shown in the previous chapters, are literally all I have for planning. When I started this story, I didn't know I was gonna put gay characters in it. It just happened. So how could I have possibly known 15 chapters ago. Second of all, screwing around with characters orientation eh? I don't remember reading anywhere what people the DP characters enjoy, and if so, this entire story is an AU! **Spoilers for the AU** Sam is dead, so is Tucker, Dani doesn't exist, Star is lesbien, Paulina is bi, what were you tihnking when you walked into this??? Third and finally! It breaks things and is annoying. How? Honestly _how. How the actual fuck does who a character is dating break an entire story?_ Did I get you invested in a story just to rub my gay agenda all over it? _Oh man, I'm sooorrryyy, really._ Do you wanna know why that warning was there? It was there so people like you wouldn't go whining about how they don't want gay characters in the story they are reading. 

Wow. I got really, really salty over that. Anyway my first maybe hate comment and I'm actually really happy, like no sarcasm at all. I'm sitting her just grinning. Danke guest for this wonderful chance. 

Onto the normal comments!!!

Pandemi: _cough cough_

YouCanOnlyPretend: :)))) it's time to unleash my inner—i literally sleep with a pride flag above my head how inner can it be?—gay 

RangerHorseTug: I'm so glad your enjoying the fic! Are you going on vacation or coming for vacation or?? Business? I don't imagine my readers are old enough to be going for business reasons but you never know. I've technically gone for business reasons and I am far from adult. 

BananaRock509: Yessss... my time has come, as for Danny hes ah, not very good with staying out of trouble. 

**WARNINGS: in case it wasn't clear before, gaaaaYYYY people, probably swearing, I didn't check. God tier google translate Spanish, god tier basic French French (please correct me I've only been taking it for a couple years), angsty ocs. I think that's it, also unedited and unbeta'ed.**

This chapter is brought to you by the unbelievably strong Sephora wifi, I'm not even in the store. I'm still looking for it... dang.

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 17_

 ** _Breathing In A Haze_**

In which a blogger fangirls,

and a ghost takes time to heal

-0-

 _Posted Two Days Ago_

User: _StaratS_

Title: _The Mystery Hero Of Amity_

Hey starshines! Its Star Stoneridge here again.

As I've mentioned in a few of my other post, and in my bio. I grew up in Amity Park! Metropolis is way bigger than it, I think we only had one high school back there, and I've seen around twelve here soooo, it's really freaking big.

The mystery robberies that have been happening, are still happening, and are still a mystery. Their last victim? Our very own angsty brotherland Gotham City. According to some _inside sources_ a traveling creepy circus called Circus Gothica is under suspicion. I bet you all didn't know this, but I think I remember that circus coming to my _old town!_ This girl, Sam wouldn't stop talking about it—may she Rest In Peace—that was a little before Phantom went missing.

Does anyone know or remember Phantom? Amity had its very own superhero! My fiancé Paulina used to have a _huge_ crush on him, though she'll never admit it. I've mentioned Phantom to a few of my close friends and none of them knew him. Which is totally weird because he had a comic too! _The Adventures Of Invisi-Bill! By Eleanor Butch._ After Phantom left he just ended the comic with this crappy final comic. Something about an asteroid. I don't know. It was really weird and I never read it. I tried to find an old comic, even asked Paulina if she had one. Nothing! Of course. Why am I not surprised? If I find anything I'll let you guys know!

So anyway, Phantom. I wanted to see if I could find anything and nothing! Absolutely nothing! Not even a blurry photo, Paulina used to have a bunch of photos in her locker of the ghost boy (don't tell her I said that) but she doesn't have them anymore. None of my friends here from Metro have even heard of him. If you know anything contact me!

Thanks starshines! Keep on glowing!!!!

Update: omg okay guys! A lot of you guys have been asking about the disappearance of Phantom, so this is the brief basic story.

Phantom is the town hero, right? All is good, and then one day he goes bad. It was really weird and kinda scary. So he's all bad boy, but like on and off? Like he'd steal stuff and then save us from ghost attacks—if you're new here, um ghost would attack our town like every single day. Weird, I know. Sam and Fenton—both of them are dead and assumed dead—go to the circus and never come back. The train drives away and they're nowhere to be seen. Sam's body was found in a lake with some train tracks leading over it. Fenton's was never found.

His(Fenton's) parents searched _everywhere_. But nothing, not even a trace. They ended up blaming ghosts. _Phantom_ specifically, since they both went missing around the same time. I tried to call the Fenton's awhile back, but ever since their son went missing, they've been different. They ended up focusing more and more on their work, now they help run Cadmus, the old one, and the new one. So i guess good for them. Once again _sources_.

-0-

There was a knock on the door. Paulina glanced up from her drawing board—she was an architect, on the side she also did commission work for art and dress designs—glancing up form the light tabel she blinked around the room, the dusked sun just barely peeking out from the skyline of high rises. " _Mi alma?_ " She asked loudly into the apartment, of course as soon as she got on a roll—finishing up the overflowing requests of drawings and summer dress designs—someone would just happen to knock. When she heard quiet shuffling, followed by arms being draped around her neck, she smiled lightly. "There was a knock on the door and I was, well _am_ on a roll" Paulina found herself sending a glance to the brief vague outline sketch on the light board. "Was wondering if you could go see who's at the door _mi sol"_

Star nodded, leaning forward to give Paulina a light peck on the lips before turning around and walking out of the small studio, dodging past a fabric mannequin body with a dress on it as she moved out the door. Quickly she moved down the hallway, her speed only increasing when the doorbell rang a second time. Star slid on the ground, using her soft socked feet to formlessly glide across the hardwood floor apartment. Coming to a stop at the door she hesitated a moment, should she open the door? There was news of breaking and entering in the area and neither she or Paulina were exactly muscular. A faint bang from the other apartment next to them, followed by the should of a guitar unformed her to the fact that her neighbour was home. At least she was somewhat safe. The neighbour—who had introduced himself as _JJ slide_ in a smooth voice, following up with _but I mean, you can call me Jacob!_ In a much more boyish tone—was rather strong. With a final and deciding sigh she wrapped her perfectly done nails around the door handle and pulled it open.

Just to immediately shut it closed. _Holy fuck._ Batman. Batman was at her door. Batman _was at her door. She just slammed the door right in Batman's face!_ Scrambling to pull open the door she was greeted by the questioning gaze Superman. Star breathed in deeply, her inner reporter going _nuts_. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Okay okay. Calm down, calm down" she whispered to herself hurriedly inviting the _two freaking superheroes just standing at her door._

"Please ah, please come in." She hurriedly moved to the side awkwardly swinging a hand out in invitation. "Ah," she paused debating whether to tell Paulina that there were _superheroes in their home._ After only a moment of internal debate she finally decided _not_ telling Paulina was in fact, a stupid idea.

"Paulina? ¡Hay algunas personas aquí que quizás quieras ver!" _Hey there's some people here that you might wanna see!_ Hearing the telltale sound of an old chair scraping scraping against the floor, she sighed hoping that Paulina wouldn't go too nuts, or at least would be able to internalize it like she was. The door slowly but surely creaked open, Paulina staring out from around the corner like a startled deer. She almost immediately perked up at the sight of the two heroes in her living room, various emotions flicking through her eyes. Confusion, panic, confusion again, bafflement, excitement and then fear, because _oh my god why are there heroes in my home did I do something bad?_ Which was quickly overridden by more excitement.

"Oh my god Batman, Superman," she smiled warmly, trying to reign in her starstruckness. "Hi I'm Paulina Sanchez, this is my fiancé Star Stoneridge. What can we do for you? Tea? Coffee?" She quickly offered, finding herself babbling off in nervous excitement.

"No," the dark knight hand responded, Superman saying the same with an added _thank you_ to the end, warmly smiling at the couple which had slowly inched towards each other.

"We need to know about _this_." Batman held up an image, _The Eye Of Entrancement_. Behind Star Paulina moved to open her mouth, ready to question why _they_ would know anything about it. "We found information mentioning it on your _blog_." The word seemed odd and uncomfortable coming out of the bats mouth, he paused, glancing at a rather confused looking Paulina.

"You still run that?" She asked, pausing for a moment before laughing. "Of course you do, you're a journalist." Star blushed lightly before clearing her throat. Turning to face the two heroes.

"Here," she offered, moving towards the couches. "Let's sit."

-0-

Phantom woke up on a hard, scratchy floor on top of a haystack. Which was probably why the ground felt so scratchy. Groaning slightly he tried to sit up, he almost immediately regretted it. Falling back to the ground with a huff he moved to roll over and on to his right ride. It didn't really work, mostly because he ended up completely tipping his entire body on to his stomach.

Phantom let out an annoyed huff. Picking at the loosely packed hay underneath of him. He found himself slowly, but surely becoming rather desensitized to waking up foggy minded and confused. Especially since he wasn't that panicked. A lot of that could be blamed on the fact that he was pretty sure his core was really messed up.

Messed up in the sense that he felt super hot and uncomfortable, but all at the same time cold and calm. Messing with a ghost core could do a number of things to a spirit. The main one being hurting it or destroying it. Another thing you could do, was mess with their personality. Not in any major ways, but it could make a ghost act like it was younger, or older. More clingy or skulky. Usually though, it would cause violent mood swings, as the core worked to realign itself. Violent mood swings were something Phantom _already_ went through on a daily basis. _This was not going to be fun._

Phantom—after lying there for an undetermined amount of time—finally opened his eyes, and immediately panicked. It was dark out. The train cart plunged in complete and utter darkness. He blinked his eyes wearily, glancing around waiting for his night vision to take effect. It didn't, and when it didn't he began to panicked. More than he usually did. "Oi?" _Hey?_ He called into the darkness. "Hallo?" _Hello?_ He tried again, carefully raising himself from the hay bed.

"Tu n'ecoles?" _You called?_ A soft voice replied, making Phantom jump into the air and begin to float. He recognized this voice. It was—ah, he couldn't remember her name. She was the lady who in private—and only in private—he considered his mother. _Sheik_ he vaguely recognized.

"Li veuz de'lirq!" _I can't see!_ Phantom said in a hushed panicked tone. "Li veuz de'lirq!" He repeated, ripping his hands up to drag along his face, and more importantly his _eyes_. Phantom found himself slowly curling into a ball, letting out whining noises and begging purrs, which stuttered and blinked painfully, the still healing core not being able to handle trying to make so many sounds while still damaged.

"Oi, oi, oi, oh bebe." _Hey, hey, hey, oh baby_ *. "C'est d'accord, mon petit, c'est d'accord" _it's okay, little one, it's okay._ Slowly the woman moved closer to Phantom, guiding him to the ground and sitting with him in a nearby haystack.

Phantom found himself curling into the body of the woman—his mother, his _unknowingly_ adopted mother—listening to the calming purr of the elder ghost core, slowly lulling him into a rather peaceful slumber.

-0-

Sheik watched as Phantom slept in her arms, his core working to pulse and purr in time with hers. It failed rather miserably, pulsing far to quickly in its slightly panicked _need to heal body need to heal body need to hea_ —state. A soft mist escaped Phantoms lips, and Sheik found herself glancing up, seeing the shadowed forms of three ghost entering the cart. Big, Finks, and Retribution.

The three ghosts moved to sit across from Sheik, leaning up against the rather cold walls. "So, 'ow's the lil' one?" Big finally asked after a few moments of silence, save for the light rumbling purr echoing along the walls. Retribution rolled his eyes at the onthers concern, mumbling profanities under his breath.

Sheik sighed, shaking her head slowly, before just shrugging her shoulders, a hopeless expression on her face. The message was crystal clear to all the occupants in the cart. "So the kids gonna die? End? Whatever ghost call it." Retribution suddenly asked, his voice making the ghost flinch ever so slightly.

"He's," Finks hesitated ever so slightly. "He's healing," the ghost finally settled for, glancing at Sheik for confirmation.

Retribution raised an eyebrow, sinking onto one of the boxes, and pulling a leg up with him. He rested one arm on his knee and used the other one to support his body. "And _that's_ why he's making so much noise? Like damn, thought we had a _cat in here._ " New ghost were also prone to violent mood swings.

 _This could not possibly end well._

 **Comment question! What's something awkward/embracing that's happened to you before.**

I opened up tumblr while in a line up and the first picture post whatever to load was a really gorey drawing of Danny, the lady behind me make this startled chocking sound and I turned around and she just sorta looked from me to my phone and back.

 _I regret **all.**_


	18. The Clock Would Not

**Follow up to that one hat—not really though—comemnt. Because your comments won't show up**

First. I'm disappointed it wasn't meant to be a hate comment, second I don't know if you just didn't see the hints or?? But Danny isn't getting shipped with anyone. Second. This story isn't about romance so adding in some plot about Danny's love for Tucker or whoever wouldn't make sense. I'm so confused?? Who did you think I was going to ship Danny with? And wHY? Danny won't have any romantic relationships cause he's not really mentally stable enough for that, so Idk where you got that idea from. For those who want to know about the one with Damien, I'm p he's talking about Incision. I thought I made it really clear that it was gonna be star and Paulina but _shrugs_ idk. Lastly. Did I mention clockwork somewhere? If got a god awful memory, if I didn't then?? And if i did then _that's treason._

Big dramas guys. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: _did I like how what ended??_ I can barely remember what I wrote from the last chapter I'm so sorry!! Secondly... Cadmus!! Don't mind me, just planting some plot lines _nothing to see here. ALSO..._ imange begin able to say you had a gay fan fic written about you. Ah you know what my greatest sympathies to you. 

Guest: fun fact! Paulina doesn't actually have a canon last name. Sanchez is just an uncomfortably highly accepted head canon. I think... I mean that's what the wiki says. Like how Danny doesn't have a middle name, it's not officially James or whatever. 

**Warnings: idk at this point. Short chapter because I swear everything hurts. Heavy AU/headcanon stuff... and me making mistakes.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 18_

 ** _The Clock Would Not_**

In which new cast member joins, 

and an investigation begins.

-0-

Freakshow—nearly—let out a startled shriek when he moved to one of the spare carts. There in the cart, with bright red eyes and a hazed, almost drugged look, was the Martian girl. Slowly, cautiously he approached her. "My, my, my what do we have _here_?" Slowly Freakshow stalked towards the girl. She only stared blankly "now _this_ , is what _I_ call a _plot twist._ " He began to circle her, like a predator, hunting for its prey. Waiting to _pounce_.

Rather suddenly, Freakshow stuck his face in front of the girls. Staring into her glossy eyes. His reflection looked back at him with a curious expression. _Hmm_ , he found himself quietly humming a questioning tone. With a smug look look the man backed up, swinging the Eye Of Entrancement around him wildly, watching the girls eyes flicker, following it in a trance. "This was _unexpected_ , but I am definitely _not uninterested._ " He spun on his heels, his cape twirling magnificently behind him with a quiet _swish_. "Come along _girl_." Freakshow made a vague hand motion, trotting out of the cart like a proud wolf.

He moved rather quickly, the Martian girl floating after him silently. Wrapping his hands around the handle to open one of the other carts up, he pulled, _hard_. The door swung open with a screech. Honestly, Freakshow couldn't help but stare at the scene laid out before him. Maybe he _did_ need to tighten his reign on his control over the ghost. It _was_ getting pretty loose.

The young one—physically— _Phantom_ , was curled up in the lap of the French girl, Sheik, or whatever her name was. Across from them and on the wall with the other door, was Finks, Big and the new one, Retribution. In the farthest corner Tensor was singing a low tune—he _was_ a bar singer in life if Freakshow remembered correctly. Tensor was one of the first ghost he had taken, so he definitely knew quite a bit about the ghost—while Previce leaned up against him and played on some sort of summoned smaller guitar. Picking and plucking at the strings absentmindedly.

"This is where _you'll_ be staying. _For now_." Freakshow spoke suddenly almost dangerously, drawing the attention of all of the ghost, save for Phantom who stayed in his curled up position, purring softly like a cat. With a disgusted hiss, Freakshow shoved the dazed girl into the cart, before spinning around and walking away leaving the ghost and Megan in the cart.

-0-

"I don't know much about it." Star stated simply. "I came across it when I was searching up some ghost related stuff. Legend state that originally the gem was owned by a man named Jacob Richardson, who obtained it from unknown sources. Some say that he found it in the ground, others say he bought it from a merchant. His daughter Olive, was gifted the jewel for her eleventh birthday, and she treasured it. Keeping it as sort of a good luck charm. The details get a little blurry here again, but it's said that she came down with a great illness. Out of desperation she summoned a demon, the demon saw the gemstone, which she kept on the nightstand by what she believed to be her deathbed. His interest was immediately taken by the shining Eye, and so he decided to strike a deal with the girl. She would offer up the jemstone, in return the demon was to heal her of all her illness.

"The demon, seeing the rich girl as a toxic and manipulative child, cursed the stone. Forcing all who ever came to own it, to either give their soul to it or give another's. She learned of the curse only after she was out of the hospital, enraged she threw fits and tried to summon the demon back to kill him. Eventually Olive died, leaving her angry spirit trapped in the Eye, owner through owner the gemstone passed leaving anger and craze in its path. Slowly it began gaining more spirit power and more emotional power from all the souls forced and trapped in it. Over time, the owners began to notice that they could control _ghost_ with the jewel. Connecting the minds of the holder to the ghost, the Eye being a middle man of sorts.

"I guess, that over time as more and more people used the gem for their own reasons it became more and more violent, more and more emotional. I don't know where it is, but the one Freakshow, ehm, the guy from Circus Gothica, has looks startlingly similar."

Batman nodded slowly, he had been taking mental notes the entire time. How this girl new so much, he wasn't sure. Maybe he'd have to look into it. Across from them the two girls—Paulina and Star—shared a glance, before Paulina moved to open her mouth. "Did—" She hesitated, tensing slightly in nervousness. Star moved to grip her hand encouragingly. Paulina moved to continue. "Did something happen with it?" The two girls shared a glance.

Internally, Batman sighed he didn't really want to involve any civilians into the case, but at this point he didn't have a choice. That was when Superman suddenly butt in. "Do you recognize this boy?" He asked, making a point to ignore the mild glare Bruce had sent him. Superman slid an image over the table. Spinning it with his fingers to face the two girls.

There was a boy, he wore a dark caplet and far too large sweatpants. His eyes were red ( _red_ ) and wide, a mischievous glint in them. The boys skin was pale and ghostly, it streaked on his body in an odd way, leaving deep hallows in his cheeks and deep holes under his eyes. The last thing the two girls noticed was the greasy grayish hair.

Paulina and Star shared a look. Glancing at each other with all to pale faces. "That looks like," Paulina found herself starting, glancing down at the picture on the desk.

Star swallowed equally as nervous. "Yeah" she agreed. "That looks like Fenton."

"The missing boy?" Superman questioned softly, standing up and moving to the girl's side to look at the photo more easily.

"Yeah," Paulina nodded in confirmation. "Hold on, lemme" she paused before standing up, "I think I still have my yearbook from high school." She moved, walking over to a nearby bookshelf to rummage through it.

Star turned back to the heroes, Superman had gone back to sit next to Batman, the two of them waiting patiently. "Fenton, well Danny" she corrected "was the son of two ghost hunters. Maddie and Jack were their names I think. I'm pretty sure they work with, or own or something I'm not actually completely sure, Cadmus Labs." Star shook her head slightly, sending a glance to Paulina who was still looking for the old year book. "Danny wasn't really popular, he was also infamously well known for just _disappearing_. Like he'd leave class to go to the bathroom or something and not come back until lunch. Sometimes teachers would try to search for him, but they never came up with anything. So I guess when he first disappeared all those years ago we just thought it was normal, and that eventually he'd come back. He didn't, but this photo, it—it looks just like him."

"Found it!" Paulina suddenly called from the other room—after not finding it in the bookshelf she was originally searching she had moved to another room—her footsteps alerting the three left in the living room to her entrance. "Here he is." She presented, placing down the book at pointing to a certain picture. "I can't find the portrait since our school had a weird sorting system, but I did find these. It was a page with a bunch of photos of groups of kids doing various things.

The first thing Batman noticed were the boys eyes, they didn't look human, almost reflective. Like a cats eye. He was staring down intently at a computer looking contraption. Next to Fenton was an African boy who had his mouth open like he was speaking, on the other side of Fenton was a dark haired girl who was pointing to something on the screen of the computer. Under each person a label was written. _The goth, the freak, the geek._ A glance up showed him that both Star and Paulina were looking away blushing in embarrassment.

"Wait," Superman suddenly said, bringing the photo of the gray haired boy that they had brought to his face. "If that was Fenton then, and _this_ is Fenton now, why do they look the same?" The two girls stared. Now that they looked at it it looked as if Fenton has simply stopped aging. Weird.

Batman frowned. He'd have to think about this.

-0-

" _So_ " Previce began slowly, glancing from the new girl—who just stood and stared—to the other occupants of the train cart. "Who're you?"

 _Silence_ , the girl didn't say anything. "Uhm," Big suddenly spoke up, flicking his eyes across the room. "Maybe 'e's a mute? Like 'e can't talk er somethin'?" The ghost suggested, moving to stand up, grunting slightly as he stumbled to his feet. Big moved, walking over to the Martian girl with heavy foot falls. "Er ya aight there?" He asked almost hesitant, now standing in front of the girl.

The girls eyes suddenly snapped fully open from their previous haze, a small amount of clarity returning to them. She let out a small, quiet _huh?_ Glancing around in confusion as she did so. Her eyes flicking from ghost to ghost.

"So, 'oo are ya?" Big asked finally saying the question all the others in the cart had in their minds, sans Phantom of course, who had fallen asleep still curled up in Sheiks lap.

"Um," the girl only responded dazedly, blinking sleepily. "Megan." She finally responded after a moment.

" _Megan_?" A voice echoed from behind Big, Previce had moved, standing behind Big with a wolfish grin on her face. "You don't _look_ like a ghost," she stated, brushing lightly past Big. Seductively swinging her hips as she moved.

That was when she suddenly fell, letting out a surprised noise. Finks tackled the ghost girl to the ground, send the two of them tumbling and rolling past Megan and towards the wall, babbling and yelling in Loriven. "Ignore her. She's stupid." Finks quickly explained to the very confused looking Megan, before going back to wrestle with Previce.

Big coughed awkwardly, drawing back the attention of Megan. "Welcome to the cast."

-0-

Ugh. 

**Leaving reviews makes me consideretly happier and more willing to continue! Even if it's literally just a** _cool story._

 **Question of the day or whatever:** since school is starting soon—for me anyway—let's get some school stories going around.

Instead of a story I'm just gonna vent my inner panic... so I'm going to a new school, and it's not at the beginning of the year. Basically I'm Canadian so I'm in JH which is 7-9th grade, and I'm going into a new school for 8 grade—oh shoot. I'm super young... everyone panic—and I already know a few people who go to this school. There's this one girl that I'm kind of friends with and she knows that I'm gay, but I don't want any non friends to know about it—I'm fine with ppl online knowing cause it's the internet.. and you guys are a lot more decent then JH students. Unfortunately she's clueless when it comes to social cues and is probably gonna out me to my parents without realizing it whether I want her to or not... which is fun so basically I'm stuck in a little hole of panic.


	19. Nore Ever Stop

PhantomGoat13: thank youuuuu, also I aspire to be able to punch a hole though a wall but just running at it.

Bellmitch Kritznovah: oH sorry lol, yeah I was sitting there like... should I? Or should I not? Obviously I did cause how can I not put in little nods to the show. As for the questions... hopefully they'll be answered in this chapter??

Guest: thank you I feel so loved

The-humfrum: _hi Snaffle. I regret all._

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 19_

 ** _Nore Ever Stop_**

In which a lead is missed, and

a team member is gained back again. 

-0-

"Another break-in? Seriously?" Robin glanced to his right, watching Kid Flashes speeding form, he had been non stop complaining ever since they had left and gone to the streets. Personally though, Robin could care less what they were doing, as long as he got some action. "Plus" he heard Kid Flash continue, "we don't even _know_ where Megan is! Shouldn't we be, oh I don't know, _looking for her?"_

Aqualad jumped down from the roof of a taller building, easily jumping across the tops of short ones long side Robin. "The league is taking care of it. For now, focus on the mission at hand." Kid Flash rolled his eyes, moving to run faster along the road with an annoyed _Yeah right_. Mumbled under his breath.

They arrived on scene, everything was quiet, no cars on the roads or people on the sidewalks, even if it was almost completely dark out, there was usually at least something happening. Distantly Robin could hear the sound of cars rushing on the highway, people yelling indiscernible words in one of the other streets. It was odd. Them being the only ones there on that road, especially since everything out of range seemed so alive.

That was when the world exploded into sound; glass breaking, an alarm ringing, shrieking and yelling. A woman in a sharp suit and skirt was flung out the window, her limbs flailing uselessly around her as her body roughly hit the ground and skidded a few feet down and onto the street.

Artemis jumped down, moving to the woman's aid, holding her hand to help her into a sitting position. Meanwhile, Superboy ran forward, leaping through the already broken window with great stride. He stared around the bank. There were a few startled, confused looking employees, who were glancing around nervously looking like they were debating whether or not it would be safe to run.

That was when a few figures appeared, a slightly annoyed looking boy with white hair and a dark cloak, a odd punk rock looking woman with long wiry hair, and _Megan_. Conner froze, staring with too wide eyes. "M—Megan!" He managed to studded out after a minute of being just stuck there frozen. He found himself slowly stepping forward. That was when she turned to him. Her neck moving to snap towards him. Conner froze once again, a sentence dying on his lips as he moved to try to say something, _anything_. Her eyes were red ( _red_ ) and bright, shining almost dully. The way a blind persons would, or the way a corpse eyes would. It was startling.

"Megan?" Conner said again repeating himself, this time much, much, quieter, almost in an unbelieving, confused tone. "Megan what are yo—?" He began to question, before he was suddenly shot at by a green blast of sorts. Dodging it quickly he let out an annoyed growl. The cloaked boy only looked down at him—he was floating in the air, his cloak billowing almost majestically around him in an invisible wind—more of the strange green energy builded in his left hand. "What did you do to Megan?" Superboy found himself almost growling. Just as the rest of the team came into the building.

That was when the fight began. Fighting mostly against Megan, and ignoring the other floating individuals. The two other floating beings seemed more focused on stealing rather then helping their _teammate._ The female being briefly glanced up at the group of heroes, sending off some sort of mental signal that caused the teams heads to explode in pain. They had continued to throw punch after punch, until Zatanna was able to trap the girl in a force field. The two other beings had ran off with large bags of money in each hand. Megan seemed to thrash and bang herself up against the force field angrily like a rabid animal. After a moment everything stopped. She stopped banging and raging, opting to fall to the ground with a pained cough.

Zatanna hesitantly moved towards the fallen Martian girl. Slowly reaching her hand up to touch the force field. Megan stared, red ( _red_ ) eyes slowly fading to pools of powerful green. "I—" Megan spoke pausing as she tried to figure out what she wanted to say "W—wh—" She stuttered for a moment. "What?" Finally Megan managed to spit out. Her voice raw and confused.

Suddenly Megan straightened out, as if on high alert. "The others!" She yelled much to the teams confusion. "There were others. The ringmaster!" She blurted out quickly her mind working a mile a minute. "He—he was controlling them—controlling _me_! Somehow with this weird staff orb thing. I don't—I don't know how it works but there were others!" The team moved closer, Zatanna hesitantly bringing down the shield as they did so. "There was a boy, around thirteen or fourteen I'm not sure, and a bunch of others, but none of them had normal names—I, I don't think they're human."

"What were their names?" Robin questioned, helping Megan to stand up.

"Ahm there was Big, Previce? I'm sorry my mind is all, _fuzzy_. The boy—the youngest one—was Phantom I think." She reached a hand up to rub at her head. "But that's not the point. I—I don't think, if they are there willingly, that they're being treated right."

-0-

"Fenton, and Phantom are the same person." Clark froze. Glancing at Bruce as he sat in front of a large computer in the bat cave. Then, he blinked straighten up in the chair he had been spinning in rather childishly before.

"What?" Clark questioned, standing up and moving towards the computer and Bruce. "What do you mean?"

"Look." Bruce simply answered, pointing at the face recognition program that had been running on the computer. There were two pictures, a picture of a dark haired blue eyed boy, a school photo Clark realized. Next to that picture was a somewhat blurry shot of a white haired green eyed boy. "This," he started zooming in on the photo of the black haired boy. "Is Daniel Fenton, and this," he zoomed in on the white haired boy. "Is Phantom. I'm not sure if this Phantom, and the mysterious small town hero Phantom are the same person" Clark raised his eyebrow at this. Looking on disbelievingly. "But the two, Fenton and Phantom have a startling resemblance." The number on the now zoomed out screen revealed a 96% match.

Clark frowned, staring at the photos before speaking. "How would that work? If Fenton was part of Star and Paulina's class, then wouldn't he be around twenty years old like they are? Phantom looks almost younger then Fenton does."

"Not necessarily," Bruce began to explain. "If this Eye Of Entrancement controls ghost, then it's possible that Phantom could be a ghost." Clark looked positively startled and disturbed at the fact that a meer small town teenager could've died, and come back as a ghost just to be enslaved.

"W—what about the small town hero, Phantom?" Clark finally asked with a noticeably drier throat then before. He could feel the beginning of an uncomfortable lump forming. A dead kid. Did anyone know? Was he murdered? How did he die?

Bruce sighed, a heavy somber noise. "As far as I know, there is no correlation. Fenton was hard enough to find, especially since Amity is basically a ghost town now. As for the ghost boy, I wasn't able to find anything other then that Blog on Phantom."

-0-

Amity Park

Four months after the disappearance of Daniel Fenton and Phantom.

"Good morning Amity park," a rather stressed tone rang throughout the building. Madeline Fenton rather forcefully put down her coffee cup, sparing a glance out the window. It was dusty out. Thick clouds of brown and gray covering the town leaving her not being able to see very well, infact she couldn't even see the house across the road. "This is Lance Thunder here, if you—" the man coughed painfully. "If you or anyone you know is still left in Amity Park—" another cough. "Please evacuate immediately. The Axon Lab located just outside of our small town has overheated. The radiation that will be blasted from the lab in an estimated four hours could very easily kill you and any pets. Please if you or anyone you lo—" the man paused again, staring with wide, wide eyes somewhere off space. "I'm sor—" the screen set to static.

The sound of an explosion ringing in the distance made her flinch. Madeline glanced out the window watching as the wind seemed to pick up rapidly. She stared outside tiredly. Slowly walking down to the basement taking the coffee cup she had with her. She sealed the basement door, both basement doors. The normal looking one at the top of the stairs, and the metallic strong one at the bottom. Madeline let out another tired sigh, feeling the first waves of extreme ecto-energy shake the building. She could hear the sound of rain and wind and thunder echoing from the outside. The ectoplasm causing odd shifts in the air and surrounding areas.

Climbing into the spectrespeeder she sent a glance over to Jackson Fenton, who was in the driver seat. She nodded sombrely glancing at a photo of a family. Her family, left behind in the lab. "Let's go Jack." She finally said with another heavy sigh.

The sped through the open ghost portal as the house on top of them was pelted with lightning and hail.

The great Amity Calamity.

Zero survivors. Scientists Jackson and Madeline Fenton still missing.

-0-

"There are those missing years. Fenton went missing, last seen around the same time as Samantha Manson. Who was found dead in Kayıp canyon. He was assumed dead, so it's very well possible that this Phantom character, is his ghost."

Clark frowned slightly, "According to those reports only the girls body was found, and when they found it they weren't even sure whose body it was. Apparently, according to a news article I found, her body was so torn up by all the rocks that they had to check dental records to see which child it was, but they never found another body." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "There were sightings of Fenton though, or at least a person that _looked_ like Fenton. Coming into town and hanging around the market _borrowing_ things every once in awhile."

"That—" Bruce sighed. "Dick told me about a boy he ran into a while back, and apparently he looked just like this Fenton kid. So how is a kid both dead, missing, and alive?"

Clark shook his head staring up at the image of the black haired boy. " _God_ , what happened to you?" He mumbled.

-0-

Phantom sat in the train cart, a few new bruises colouring his pale skin. He was mad that he had been replaced. Replaced by some no-good not even ghost _freak_. He almost instantly stopped that line of thought. For one reason or another, he never liked the word _freak_. The girl was not a ghost though, and he had been _replaced_. No longer in charge of his own squad. Merely someone else's slave—Phantom ignored the fact that as far as he knew, he had lived(existed?) his entire life as a slave—to use and command with.

Still sitting in the corner he shifted, wincing at the sparks of pain running up his spine. He still wasn't fully recovered from the other night—his core still hurt, still throbbed, still cried out in protest at every use of power—which made him rather mad. Sheik had tried to calm him down, saying _there was nothing he could do._ He had, in response snapped at her. Phantom ended up regretting it almost immediately, begging for forgiveness repeatedly.

He had tried to get along with Retribution but, the man didn't enjoy Phantoms existence at all. Other then that one ghost, the others were pretty cool. Big taught him multiplication. Which was hard, and he hated. After he had complained Finks stated that objectively science was better—well he didn't exactly say that, there were a lot more bigger words that Phantom couldn't understand at all—and then started explaining why some rocks were older than other rocks. He knew a little more French now too, un chien. A dog, and un chat. A cat. He still wasn't very good at French. Though, according to Sheik he knew a lot more than he thought because he had said some advanced stuff. He didn't have a good memory.

He never really thought about it.


	20. For He’d Never Catch

Ehhhh I don't know how to feel about this chapter. I was really sick while writing it. ALSO!! Where was I? Life. I was at life. School starts literally tomorrow and I'm very nervous lol. So there might be another mini hiatus, but hopefully not. Also! New cover maybe depends on when your looking at it. 

Okay ahm. Reviews. Yes. 

Guest (advilVillian): yeah fnf can be really glitchy when it comes to guest accounts commenting, I'm glad you like everything though! 

YouCanOnlyPretend: i personally hate sad endings so don't worry. 

Pikachukite: that'll be explained next? Chapter I think maybe not really sure sorry. 

Bellmitch Kritznovah: okay first of all. Freaky. Second as for Megan, even though the team doesn't show it, no one really 100% trust her at the moment. And for Retribution, yeah probably. 

**Momentum**

 _Chapter 20_

 _ **For He'd Never Catch**_

In which the hunt begins 

and education is gained. 

-0-

"How do we know it won't happen again?" Batman questioned, staring across at the team practicing from a distance.

"We don't." Martian Manhunter replied curtly, sparing only a glance towards the other. "But we can prepare." He began, noticing the light glare. "I'm doing research on why this gem designed to control _ghost,_ is controlling her, and by possible extenton, _me_."

"How do we know she isn't _still_ being controlled?"

Martian Manhunter's eyes narrowed, staring at the training teens. He watched as two of them began sparring. Megan and Robin, using no powers they both started to throw punches and kicks at each other. Jumping around the area gracefully. "Her eyes were red, but now, they are not."

The room was silent other then the sounds of the teens clashing against each other. "She could still be un—"

"I will deal with it." Martian Manhunter interrupted, ignoring the glare he received

-0-

Phantom stared at the school in mild confusion and annoyance. His master has decided that one; he needed more control over the ghosts—which of course meant a lot more waking up from the red having no idea what he was doing or where he was going—and two; that he needed to find out more about that Martian girl. Unfortunately for him though, all his master knew was that she had a human looking form—of course she could shape shift, _he_ couldn't shape shift—not what the human form might _look_ like, or where it might be. Other then of course, she went to school. As far as he knew, Freakshow wasn't even one hundred percent sure that she even went to this school. Which was just peachy. How was he supposed to find her.

Phantom, decidedly hated school.

Well, maybe that wasn't true. Since technically Big and Finks taught him, and sometimes the others taught him stuff too, and that wasn't actually that bad. He didn't mind that, but this! This was not something he could deal with. It was going to be crowded and busy and loud and he didn't want to go. At all, yet here he was.

Phantom breathed in, looking over his his human guise—technically, he _could_ shape shift then. Take that—black hair and blue eyes. He was also painfully skinny and every other step left him out of breath and heaving slightly. Phantom glared once more at the building, heaving an angry pout he moved.

Now, his name was Daxon Red. Which was somewhat fitting, and he hated it all the same. It was a Wednesday, only a couple days after the Martian girls escape. He was to go to school and find out her human guise, become her friend and then drag her back to the circus. Because of _course_ he was only useful for retrieving something _better_ than him. Phantom wasn't bitter. _Really_.

Stepping into the building was hell. It was noisy and people violently shoved him from side to side. He already hated it. After a few moments of awkwardly, shyly bumbling around the hallway, he found the office. There was a woman sitting at a rather large desk separating the front of the school and the hallways, from the library and music room. There was a small chalk written board with flowery handwriting, _Mrs. Broadly_ , and then under; _Head office_. Was proudly written. Phantom suppressed an annoyed eye roll before walking up to the desk.

"Ahm," he stalled, gaining the attention of the woman. She let out a surprised _oh! I didn't see you there!_ In a faux cheerful tone, now that Phantom got a good look at her, she was definitely quite the character. She was long and mangly, like a spider, with bones that stuck out at odd and uncomfortable angles. Her brown hair was long and wispy, creating an almost glowing halo around her head. Mrs. Broadly coughed, her small green eyes barring holes into Phantoms own. He realized that he had been staring. _Great_.

"Oh. I'm uh, I'm new here." He managed to stutter out. Ducking his head and glancing up through thick eyelashes. "And I—there was an uh, a um, a guide?" Phantom cringed at his own voice. The woman reminded him too much of his master, and all he could think about was the lump in his throat and the almost need to run away and hide.

Mrs. Broadly grinned revealing thick, banded, blue, braces, before closing her lips to form a much kinder looking smile. "Oh yes dear." She said, noticing Phantom obvious nervousness. "You're the circus boy yes?" The woman asked rhetorically, Phantom nodded almost invisibly as a reply. She smiled kindly once more. "Such a shame you have to move so much, you must be very smart to keep up with all the topics. Especially since you move so much." Mrs. Broadly small talked, clicking through files on her computer. She clicked a button attached to a corded phone before bringing it up to her ear.

 _Megan Morzz to the office please, Megan Morzz._

Was spoken over the loudspeakers. Phantom briefly sent a nervous glance around. He didn't really know how schools worked other then the basics. This was new.

Megan Morzz—Who in Phantoms opinion looked weirdly not-human—arrived at the office. She glanced around the office for a minute before she noticed him. "Hi! You're Daxon Red right?" Phantom nodded slightly, glancing behind him like there was a way to escape. _Maybe if he just ran fast enough_. Ah, but now it was too late, as the girl had come up behind him. "Come on I'll show you around." She smiled, and Phantom felt like she was reading from script or something. Which was rather disturbing.

"We're in Mr. Dreary's class. It's—it's not as boring as it sounds" she smiled slightly, taking a sharp turn and walking into a classroom.

There was a balding man up front. He wore a cosy red sweater and a pair of jeans. His face was kind and aged, small circular glasses fitted on his nose and a cotton beard along his face. He spun around at the sound of Megan walking into the room giving her a soft smile as she approached, and Phantom froze.

Phantom blinked and suddenly Megan and the teacher were gone. Slowly he turned his head, wearily looking around the room. No one was there and it was dark out. His breath came out in soft, cold puffs. Just barely visible for a second before whipping into the surrounding air. There was frost covering the windows and floorboards, tracing intricate almost floral designs into the wood and desks.

A light tap at the fogged up window drew his attention towards it, slowly he moved towards it, feeling as if he had no control over his body. A face was pressed up against it, Phantom could just barely make out the face of a red haired girl only maybe a few years older than him. She was breathing heavily, checking behind herself every few moments before tapping on the glass lightly again. _Tap, tap, glance. Tap, tap, glance_ Slowly Phantom walked towards her, coming face to face with the girl. Her eyes widened in shock he could only assume, before her mouth opened.

"Da—"

"Daxon!" Phantom gasped, eyes shooting open, suddenly he was on the floor in the classroom with Megan and the teacher, Mr. Dreary. Their worried faces staring down at him. "Are you alright son?" Mr. Dreary asked carefully, a certain glint in his eyes almost as if he knew there was something strange about Phantom.

Phantom blushed lightly, a slightly green tint to his cheeks and nose, glancing away he coughed into his shoulder. "N-no, no sir. Sorry sir." Megan helped him to his feet trying to catch his eye as she did so. He only kept his head down.

This was going to be awful.

-0-

There was a deafening crash, and before Phantom could even understand what was happening he was soaring through the air and crashing up against a wall. He was sure there would be a dent. Another crash rang through the ground, smoke forcing its way into Phantoms lungs as he made an attempt to push himself into an upright position. The ground shook roughly under him, sending Phantom sprawling back to the floor. " _I_ heard that _Batsy_ _'s_ in town! So I thought I'd give him a little ol' visit!" A voice rang out somewhere above him. Phantom found himself groaning as he tried to force his body up once more. " _And_ of course I come here to find out he's been _cheating on me_ with some creepy little goth circus!" A burst of laughter and another explosion sent Phantom air bound and into another wall.

The bomb had to be rather close to him, especially since he could just barely feel the sparks and embers brushing against his back. " _Phantom_!" Another voice shrieked, he vaguely recognized it as his master. A distant order rang out in his head ( _attack attack attack)_ and he felt his limbs moving against their will, ignoring the flaring pain of newly formed bruises as his body readied for attack.

It had meant to be a simple mission. After the actual hell which was school—he tried to ignore the fact that it was all that stupid Martian girls fault—his master had decided that he needed _more money._ So off to the bank they went. Of course though, they didn't account for the fact that another villain might be there, and a _clown_ based one at that. _The Joker_. Phantom didn't know much about him other than a few news reports he had caught while walking through towns. Apparently though, this guy was one of the big villains in Gotham and just _had_ to hauled his way over to Happy Harbour _just_ because of Circus Gothica. Now, they were fighting.

That was when the Bat appeared, because of course wherever his villains went, he would follow. Another explosion rocked the ground, sending Phantom rolling away, distantly he could hear the sounds of people yelling, someone nearby calling out in stressed _Loriven_. Phantom let out a pained groan as someone lifted him into the air. "Oooh," a shrill voice spoke, slowly Phantom opened his eyes to try to figure out what was happening, _who_ was holding him. His head rang and his vision swam. _Nope_ , Phantom decided, realizing he probably had a concussion at this point. "And _who do we have here?_ " The same voice asked excitedly.

He could feel his body shift, swinging around to face who ever had grabbed him by his cape. Phantom could hear the sound of the Joker—who be now realized was holding him—shifting, before suddenly the hand grabbing him was in his hair. Fingers tangling in his wispy white locks to hold him up. He let out a startled cry, reaching up to try to force the hands up, his eyes shot open. "You just _have_ to crowd _my_ thing don't'cha?" Joker shook Phantom by his head, sending rattles of pain though the boys body.

"Hey _Frrrrreakshow_!" The Joker called into the crowd of panicked humans and ghosts. "I think I like this one!" He shook Phantom once more. " _And_ , I think I'll keep him."

Phantom began to black out. _Crap_. Was the only thing he could think as black dotted his vision like bats in a cave. _Heh, bats._ He blearily though, eyes rolling in his head as he glanced behind Joker at the wreckage. There was another explosion, and suddenly he was falling back to the ground. The Joker was gone.

As black consumed his vision, a shape, a person approached.

-0-

Hhhhhh I always forget these. Like. Always. Let's go with, favourite Netflix series, and if you don't watch Netflix, tv series.

I'd suggest watching Dark, it's basically German Stranger Things, but. It's a whole lot darker, hA. Unfunny. I'll never not advertise that show to you btw because it's great and you should definitely watch it.


	21. A Break, A Pause

_Dragging myself from my grave._ I live! The bus I was supposed to be on this morning got in a crash with another bus. So that happened.

AlecGateway: I've got a need, a need for cliffhangers. Anyway thanks for the review, and yeah Dark is spooky time travel.

Guest: my family's been trying to get me to watch supernatural, part of me wants to so I can write a fic— _that's why I watched YJ, just to write this fic—_ but there's _so many seasons._

 _ **Warnings: swearing. Like. Lots of it. Me forgetting the warnings... umm too many commas maybe bad grammar and violence.**_

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 21_

 _ **A Break, A Pause**_

In which retribution is attempted, and

the ghost zone has odd effects on the mind. 

-0- 

Amity Park

Four months since the explosion.

Being in the ghost zone, simply existing in the zone was disorientating. Madeline had once woken up unsure of whether she was facing up or down. The scientist in her head was going crazy, all the things she could learn. One of the first things she realized was that, in a way she was a ghost here. If she focused hard enough she could phase through solid objects, or turn invisible. The easiest thing for her to do, she found, was flying. Which was why getting disorientated was almost laughably easy.

She knew already, that something in her and Jackson had changed. The slight glow in his eyes when the green sky turned to a darker shade was one pointer, or how she could catch herself almost _sensing_ ghost before they showed up. This brought her to where she was currently, speeding through the zone in the spectrespeeder, already the food rations they had collected before the explosion were wavering. Part of her cursed Jackson for _eating so much_. Another thing she noticed. Emotions. If it was true that they were becoming more _ghostly_ , it made perfect sense. Ghost were emotional creatures, and she did find herself becoming more emotional. Violent, intrusive thoughts seemed more and more common. She breathed a sigh, the molded, recycled smell of the air making her yearn for the real world.

Jackson was in the back, sleeping. He had fallen ill some point about halfway through their journey, leaving Madeline to find a way out of the dimension. She couldn't sense portals unfortunately, and her skill of sensing ghost wasn't very good. Either that or the ambient ectoplasm in the air was making her senses fuzzy.

The possibility of a _half human half ghost_ was baffling. Although technically, it was impossible. A Schrödinger's man, if you would. How that would be possible, she wasn't sure. Maybe if you exposed someone to enough ectoplasm without killing them. A knock from the side of the wall brough Madeline out of her musings. _What_? She quietly mouthed, glancing at the wall.

 _Something was outside of the speeder_.

There was another almost unsure seeming knock. _Tap, tap tap_. Madeline drew her eyebrows together. Moving her foot to push down harder on the pettle. There was no way she was opening the door for some random ghost. _Tap, tap, tap_. She narrowed his eyes, pushing down on the pedal harder and harder. _Not today ghost._

Sometimes she wondered what happened to the other people in Amity. Most of them had chosen to evacuate after the first warnings. The notices send out by the _G. I. W_ letting the town know that there were almost dangerously high radioactivity levels in the ectoplasm at the labs had sent most of the richer family's running. The Manson's were already eager to leave the town that had claimed their daughter to its stones. She knew the Foleys were a little more hesitant.

Part of her thought about what it would've been like if they had just packet up and left, but they couldn't. There was a chance, one that most of the remaining town folk were holding onto, that Phantom was going to come back to save them.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

Madeline let out a frustrated growl, turning on the digital ghost sensors. She, personally didn't sense anything but that didn't mean there _was_ nothing. There was a beep as the speeder sparked with electricity.

 _Nothing_.

No ghost, no creature, no monster. Absolutely nothing. They were _clean_ , and yet she could've sworn she had heard something. Madeline drew back on the pettle slowing the speeder to a much safer speed, making a note to keep the sensors on and at high alert. The last thing she needed was to be attacked.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

A glance at the sensor told her there was apparently nothing out there, yet she could've sworn she had heard something. "Jack?" She asked into the back of the speeder, when she heard him grunt to signify that he was awake, she continued. "Do you hear that?"

 _Tap, tap, tap._

Jackson sat up, blearily glancing around the speeder as he gained his bearings. "Heard what?" He asked, sleepiness obvious in his voice.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

"That!" Madeline exclaimed, glancing at the walls trying to figure out which direction it was coming from. The noise seemed to get louder and louder, happening more and more.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

"I dun', I don't hear anything Mads." Jackson reported from the back. The makeshift bed creaking under his weight.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

 _Tap, tap, tap._

-0-

Megan could tell already, that they didn't trust her at all. Not even one bit. They, of course being the Team. It was rather easy, seeing as none of them made an effort to try to hide their discomfort. Or maybe they did. She wasn't exactly thinking too clearly. There was a very noticeable lack of missions, even when Joker sightings right there in Happy Harbour were reported, they did not get to go out.

Even though she was completely free of the staffs control, she found herself staring off into space blankly waiting for orders that would never come. It was a lot easier when someone was moving your body for you. As soon as she was free from control, she had tried her best to tell them all she knew. Though, with all the fuzz and blur in her mind she was left without much to work with.

Megan wanted to talk to them, demand to know why they weren't talking to her, but she didn't. Couldn't, wouldn't, for whatever reason she just couldn't bring herself to do that. It wasn't really their faults. She'd probably have acted the same way if it was one of them.

 _But it wasn't them. It was her._

Superboy had tried his best to _comfort_ her but, he wasn't exactly ever very good at that sort of thing and just ended up simply not leaving the room or turning away from her when she entered the area. It was atleast somewhat nice.

Part of her wanted to read their minds, figure out what was making them act this way. Why exactly they thought that _this_ of all things would help. Everything felt so artificial. When she had to help the new kid around, she felt so odd. Like she had seen him before.

All her interactions were rather forced, the whole team ignoring her left her to just speak like she was rehearsing lines for some badly written movie. The new boy, Daxon Red was from what she could tell, very strange. On the first day he just passed out, and Megan couldn't help but be concerned. He seemed to act like it happened all the time though, so she wasn't sure. Then there was his eyes. They were _red._ A deep, dark, almost hazy red. Most of all though, they were _hypnotizing. Ghostly._

-0-

Danny woke up to pain in his head. Both on the inside—a spiking violent headache—and the outside—his hair grinding against something hard—he realized after a moment of lying there hazedly, that he was being dragged, by his foot. By someone. He blinked his eyes distractedly letting them roll to roam the surrounding area. There were two large, tall, brick buildings on either side of him he realized. His head dragged past a dumpster and a few trash cans along with an emergency fire exit.

Wait.

He recognized this alleyway. _He knew this alleyway._

 _Phantom stood up from the body, letting his duplicate re-emerge with himself. An odd feeling raised in his throat as he briefly gagged. Behind him Freakshow rolled his eyes, moving forward and heaving the body of the rather short college age boy, over his shoulder. "Come on now." Master called, climbing one of the emergency ladders with the body to get onto the roof._

Phantoms eyes snapped up to the person dragging him. It's Alexander Demay. It's the boy he _killed_ , and Alexander Demay—Retribution—is dragging him by his right foot down the alleyway he was _killed in._ Phantoms breath quickens, and he can only watch as Alexander's head pivots to face him, giving the halfa a haunting stare. "Master doesn't know your here, doesn't know _I'm here_." Alexander explained after a moment. They're almost at the end of the alleyway.

Phantom smelled blood.

"And" he continued. "Master won't be finding out about it either." Alexander dropped the foot he was using to drag Phantom with onto the ground with a dull thud. _Alexander—Retribution—Alexander_ circled around the teens limp form like a cat waiting to pounce. "You _killed_ me here." The boy whispered stopping in front of Phantoms head.

Retribution crouched down, leering over the slightly dazed boy. "Wouldn't it be, _ironic_ , if _per say,_ someone was to, oh I don't know, do the same to you?"

At that moment, Phantom seemed to finally realize what was happening. Rolling away from the crazed ghost Phantom made quick to stand up, the smell of blood a distant memory haunting his thoughts. "Re—Retribution!" He tried to reason. "Please I—I didn't mean t—"

"Didn't mean to?" Retribution shrieked, stalking towards the cornered younger boy. " _Didn't mean to?"_ Blue fire lit up his hands as he moved to raise them at his sides, arms forming a W shape. "When _you_ put _your_ hands around _my neck? And killed me?"_

"It was—I—I wasn't in control! It was Master! Freakshow!"

" _Bullshit_!"

Before Phantom could even think to yell he was being blasted back, blue exploded into his vision before pain in his back as he hit a wall. "Bullshit!" Retribution yelled again. "You killed me you asshole! And I'll kill you!" Phantom stared at the approaching form of Retribution, double visioned and wavering. He takes a moment to be dazed, and suddenly there was hands around his neck. Phantom let out a panicked squawk, flailing his arms and legs wildly. _Retribution—Alexander—Retribution's_ eyes harden, then narrow. He will be the only one walking out of this alley tonight.

The sound of mental crunching under something's weight makes him turn around.

"Retribution? Phantom?"

-0-

Question; what do you wanna see in this story?


	22. Time Was Running Out

Bellmitch Kritznovah: Retribution doesn't really have any contacts outside of the circus, but I'm sure he probably would do something stupid like that just to get to Phantom. As for the ant man thing, **Spoliers for Ant Man or whatever it's called** yeah that's sort of what I'm going for. Lastly I'd imagine having people not trust you over something you can't control would take a bite out of your confidence. Let's hope nothing too rash happens. I've been doing all good, I hope life eases for you soon. 

Derpydragan: Maddie and Jack won't be killed off by any one. Atleast not fully _wink wink_. **Spoilers** Freakshow is gonna get caught at the end of next arc. I don't know what you mean by dissection?? Danny wasn't dissected. 

Guest: so... vaguely threatening. I love it. 

Devious Purrloin: ahh?? Probably. For whatever reason my brain was just like. Yeah. Let's switch between these two names. I thought I had switched them all? I'm sorry. 

Mitli (Guest): omg ouch no thanks. No thanks. 

The Alien of Pluto: I'll reply at the end of the chapter cause I'm gonna break out the diagram thing again. 

Guest: ah? Hello again?? 

ElizabethBathog: Wait no longer!

 **Warnings: uhm. Attempted murder? Violence. Maybe Batman being Ooc because honestly it is physically hard to write him.**

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 22_

 _ **Time Was Running Out**_

In which, promises are made

and truths are revealed. 

-0-

Ann Bernard or rather Sheik, as she had been dubbed stared in shock. She knew already, that though Phantom was young, naive and occasionally scrappy he was in no way violent. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, simply watching to two boys yell at eachother. Throwing out blows like they were nothing.

Finally, she managed to get her voice to work "Retribution? Phantom?" Her voice echoed hollowly like loud thunder in a open field. Rolling and cascading off the walls leaving a haunting echo in its wake.

Both boys froze at the sound of a voice. Retribution's head swiveled around, staring at the person that interrupted his attempted _murder_ with a mild hate. Phantom behind him, stayed still, only shifting his head to look around the boy above him's legs.

There at the end of the alleyway, between the far too tall brick buildings was Sheik. _Shit_. "This doesn't concern _you_." Retribution glared, not turning his body away from the dazed boy below him. "It concerns _me_ , and the _murderer_."

"I—" Phantom suddenly spoke, causing the two ghosts to whip their heads back towards them. "I didn't _want_ to kill you!" He managed, voice rough and course from yelling. "I didn't want _this_. I didn't want any of this to happen." He was crying now, fat, wet tears that stung his eyes. At this point Phantom couldn't even think of trying to stop it. He was just _so tired._

"Oh _really_? Is that why you lured me, is that _why you jumped me? Why you took my life no matter how much I struggled?"_ Sheik was there before Retribution had the chance to pounce, forcing him to the ground with her psychic abilities.

"I didn't want to! He—" Phantom neared hesterics, wrapping his arms around his body in an upsettingly obvious attempt to hide their shaking. "Freakshow _made me **kill you!**_

The alley went silent, the only noise being that of the heavy—unnecessary—breaths being taken by the two fighting ghosts. Retribution seemed baffled, he had built his entire self with his only goal being to get _retribution_ on who ever killed him—the phantom—but now? It wasn't him? It wasn't even someone he could kill. Retribution stared, eyes flickered from Sheik to Phantom before he took off, darting into the sky in a streak of black.

-0-

After the news caught light of the _Amity Explosion_ as they were calling it, Jasmine was quick to find any and all information about it. She had left for college only two years after her brother went missing, leaving the town to escape the memories. Her parents though, had stayed behind.

According to the news many families stayed behind believing it was a hoax, since it was the first time Axon or the G. I. W. Had tried to scare them out of the town. The ones that believed it was real, and still stayed thought that Phantom would come back and save them. Her parents though, as far as she could tell never left.

There was search team sent in to recover and account for all the dead bodies of the town, the Fenton's were not among those found, it even appeared on the news mentioning on how the leading ectoplasmic experts were nowhere to be found. Jasmine didn't know how to feel.

Years later though, they popped back up, seemingly out of nowhere. Taking over as lead researchers with Cadmus. Jasmine didn't know how to feel.

-0-

Batman found him on the roof, feet dangling childishly off the side of the high rise building as the sun set in the distance. The boy, _Phantom_ didn't show any signs of knowledge of the fact that only a few feet behind him was the dark knight other then a slight tensing and a pause in the swinging of his feet.

"Phantom." The bat greeted, not moving from his spot. Phantom only tensed further. Slowly, but carefully Phantom rose to his feet. "You're being controlled." Batman stated factually. This made Phantom turn, lightly spinning around to face the man. His red( _red_ ) eyes glowed dimly in the slowly fading sunlight.

His stance grew aggressive. _How dare this man accuse his master of such things._ Phantom ignored the blatant proof of his claims with the very thought. Opting instead to slip into a sloppy fighting stance. He said nothing. "It's true." The dark knight assumed, causing Phantom to growl lightly.

"You don't know anything!" He hissed, stalking towards the man, circelig him like a lion. Batman lowered himself, ready for any attack.

Phantom surged forward with a shout his form crashing awkwardly against the dark knight, who was easily able to force the teen to the ground. Arms wrapping around Phantoms body and pushing him on to the roof. Phantom let out a huff of air as his chest throbbed painfully. He was on his stomach with his arms secured behind him on his back, and the hit to his head made him forget that he was a ghost, and could go intangible.

"We will help you." He spoke, slowly but carefully lifting his arms off the boy and backing away. Batman knew, deep down that he should have taken the boy. Whether it be by force or will, but he didn't. That would not help anyone in the situation. If everything were to go according to his plan, Phantom would come to them, and same them a lot of possible fighting.

Phantom only stared.

-0-

The Ghost Zone

Six months since the explosion.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

 _Tap, tap, tap._

 _Tap, tap, tap._

Maddie's hands slowly made their way up to her head, fingers painfully tugging her hair in frustration. She was a mess, really. Anyone could see.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

She was going to go crazy. Madeline could hear _everything_. It would be fascinating, a new line for research if it wasn't for all the pain it brought. Footsteps behind her—god why was everything so loud—drew her attention to the fact that someone—Jack—was approaching. "Mads?" _Loud loud loud._

She spun around, anger clearly on her face as a snarl formed on her lips. " _What_?" She nearly hissed, eyes almost _flashing_ a glowing blue in the light.

Jack put his hands up. Staring at the blue energy pooling at and around her hands. He didn't realize it would affect her this much. The ghost zone tended to have a certain effect on people, if you spent too much time in it you had a chance of becoming more _ghostly_. He had assumed Maddie would be fine, mostly because _he_ was fine. Spending so much time around ectoplasm, he hadn't noticed any changes. In fact he had even checked his kids. Jazz seemed fine, no ghostly attributes.

Danny though, Danny was a different case. He had seen his sons eyes flash a poisonous _green_ , or seen his hand slip right _through solid objects._ Jack could only assume now, that Danny got it from his mother.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

Ghosts were emotional creatures.

 _Tap, tap, tap._

 _-0-_

 _Circus Boy_

 _-0-_

 _Hi again~._

 _I was literally thinking the same thing... sooooo. Here we go!_

Blink And It's Gone (like a season 1)

•Circus Boy ~ **_we were here. Except now._**

•Best Of Worst Worlds ~ **_we're here. So basically. We getting to the healing part :))) please enjoy._**

•Happy Tears


	23. He Did Not Know

Sorry for disappearing on you all, my depression got really bad to the point where I could barely bring myself to get up in the morning. I'm back tho, and alive. Hope y'all aren't too angry. I'll try to keep writing but some plot stuff is probably gonna be changed, I don't really have the energy to edit this rn I just want to post it. So it's unedited and probably messy, sorry I'll fix it later

 **Momentum**

 _Chapter 23_

Retribution supposed, that what he was doing was most likely not exactly the best of ideas, but he was mad and feeling stupid and nothing would stand in his way. He had meant to kill Phantom. To squash what little of his life that he still had, and blow out the light of his candle. Of course though, that didn't happen. Phantom had blamed everything on Freakshow.

Retribution had panicked, though he'd never admit it, he was afraid. He'd spent his entire after life building and creating his new self, and he created that new self out of a false sense of hate and spite. Everything was far too confusing and complex. Could he really believe Phantom? Trust that he wasn't a cold, black blood killer. Or was it all a lie? A rouse.

He felt a growl bubble in his throat, and with a valiant swing he punched the wall of the train cart. His fist exploded into pain, and Retribution was forced to cringe. Glancing up at the wall revealed a dent. Nice.

His mind was left a whirling mess. Sheik had come back only a few hours after he had. She's burst into the cart babbling stressfully in French before finally managing to ask him if he'd seen Phantom. He hadn't. Not at all. Not since—well, yeah. Apparently, according to the lady, he had gone missing or something.

Big muttering something foul under his breath before phasing through the cart to go look for Phantom, hopefully before he did something stupid.

-0-

It was silent in the cave when Megan stepped out from her room, most of the lights were out, and no one seemed to be near, or even in the cave at the moment. She had been napping, avoiding the team since they seemed to not want to interact with her. When she had tried to speak to them telepathically they had reacted almost violently, Conner stormed out of the room yelling at her to get out of my head. It was like they were afraid she'd somehow infect them with a hypnotic spell, she no longer had.

She moved slowly, getting ready for the coming days at school, fun.

School was dull, moving in almost a drag. Molasses and sand, slow and painful. She found herself yawning, only sparing a glance towards Conner—who had moved himself to the other side of the room—every few minutes.

Life really had gone down hill fast.

-0-

Phantom sat, he had been thinking—he'd been doing that a lot lately, which wasn't at all good since he wasn't supposed to—about the Bat. They had met on a rooftop. Things had gone down and suddenly he was being offered help. Help. From a real person who could really help him. Phantom had been offered help before. Passing glances and false promises of we'll get you out of whatever you've gotten stuck in and we can all the police, they can help you. He didn't know how to feel.

Freakshow had told him, from an early on point in his remembered life, that he—Freakshow—has saved him—Phantom—from some greater evil. Some being so terrible, so awful that he couldn't even remember it's face. Phantom of course did not know whether or not this was true. Whether these were just cloven stitched velvet lies from the tongue of a man that knew only deception. Or if they were truths so delicate, like single lone snowflakes drifting through the wind, that with a single thought of doubt could be shattered.

The ground was cold, the air; colder, harsher, more real, almost more real than he was. Almost real enough to make him doubt himself. Phantom breathed in harshly. It hurt. Everything hurt, but that was okay. He rose, standing from the old hammock bed stitched at some point prior to his arrival with the circus. It was late out, the moon high above the midnight laced sky. He drifted out the train cart, floating through the still open door, moving quietly and quickly through the surrounding trees.

What was he doing? What was he thinking? This was stupid. Go back go back go back. A quiet voice echoed in the back of his head. Go back. He didn't listen though. Powering through the branches and bushes and trees until he hit street light and highways. Phantom broke though the tree line like a fish jumping to far out from the water. Almost panicked in his realization that he wasn't where he was supposed to be. Go back go back go back. He didn't.

Phantom breathed heavily, trying to calm the thumping of his heart—he was a ghost—and the adrenaline in his veins—he was a ghost—and all the body things about his body that didn't make much sense. He was a ghost. Phantom closed his eyes. Choosing to instead breath in the deep smell of the city streets. Smoke, street food and gasoline. He walked.

What to do, what to do. It was the first time a hero had actually reached out, actually wanted to help him. Help him. Not just anyone. Him. That had to count for something. He knew that this line of thought was bad, dangerous even but he couldn't stop it. The idea of escape—from what—was enticing. Fascinating. Where would he go though? If the Bat was to save him, what would be next? He remembered being told of a ghost zone. An area, world, dimension just for ghost. Where he could live out his days in peace.

Something about that seemed wrong though. The thought of living there seemed bad, had he come from the ghost zone? Somehow, he found it hard to believe. The simple idea of him coming from a place where the sky was green and the ground only existed if one wanted it to was baffling, odd. Did he have a family? A place to stay? Someone that loved him? Missed him? Look and searched days over days wondering when he'd come back? Did he even really exist before Freakshow. There was the ghost, Retribution, the one he had killed. Bad bad bad no no no bad no stop I didn't want to no stop ba—the one that didn't exist before the circus. Was he like that? Did one of the others kill him? Guide him, lure him, down a dark alley unexpectedly just to jump him. Take his life. Kill him? Kill kill kill kill him? Him?

His face was red, sweaty with rage. Phantom grabbed at his hair bending over as he yelled furiously. This was all too much. Too too much he wanted out. Up was down and left was right and right was wrong and he wasn't sure what was real or not.

What was Batman even doing outsi—

A shadow passed over him before he could even think to finish that thought. What? Phantom spun turning around as light cackled at his fingertips. His eyes scanned the area. He was deep in the city at this point. There was a sound. Electrical, the buzz of something going wrong. A light caught his attention. Up on the powerline, holds of bright yellow snapped across it gliding through the line like some kind of electrical snake. It seemed to pause, coming to stop over top of him. Then, it dropped down. It's form seeing to flow over the street like a liquid before collecting itself. The electrical mass changed, moving and morphing into a vaguely human shape. It opened its mouth, but only static came out.

There was the sound of a siren then, and the creature, thing, person suddenly leapt, jumping to the powerline, its form moving quickly across it in a snaky static line. The sirens grew louder and Phantom suddenly realized it was time to go.

He ran, sprinting through the forest barely managing to dodge too low tree branches and fallen logs. Hitting and screaming parts of his body more than once. His blood stained green on the forest surfaces. A pained neon colour.

The sirens grew closer, hovering outside of the forest. There were men, yelling and lighting their flashlights along the woods edges.

They were following him.


End file.
